Tons of Whales

Today turned out a lot better than I expected, given it was gray and drizzling when I woke up! We had a nice sunny day with decent visibility out on the Ledge, and there were lots of whales around. We started off searching around and finding a couple elusive minkes and a fin whale, then got a call that there were some humpbacks on southern Jeffreys.

We headed that way, and were eventually surrounded by blows, with humpbacks all around! Luckily, they were fairly spread out, as several other whale watch boats were there to join in on the fun. We spent most of our time with a smallish humpback whale who had an all-black (called a Type 5) tail, who took 7 minute dives, but fluked each time so we got to see its massive tail. I haven't ID'd this whale yet but will post it here if I do!

Our hopefully soon-to-be-identified humpback!

We then saw a few more whales before heading the 27 miles back to Rye - two whales together, one of which was Polaris, a male first sighted in 1984, and another pair and a single I wasn't able to get photos of.

Polaris

The whales weren't spending as much time at the surface as they have been on several occasions over the last couple weeks, but it was really cool to have so many whales around. I just wish we had had more time so that we would have been able to see all the whales in the area and discover who they were!