Saturday on the Prince of Whales- Newburyport

I sometimes wonder how candid this blog should be. It is, after all, a blog, so I feel we should be able to post our thoughts as honestly as possible. This one is about as honest as it can get. As we were boarding today, I was wondering why in the world we were going whale watching when it had just poured and lighting was striking all around, it was still raining, and all the other whale watch boats had canceled (some even relocated to safer ports) as Hurricane Bill was on its way. The forecast was for big seas, patchy fog and lots of rain including some severe storms. I really couldn't image a day any worse. But the captain had talked to his fishing friends who were off shore already, and was watching the radar intently. I should know by now to trust the captain's instincts. We got off shore and found the ocean to be not at all as the forecast had predicted.

A few miles out of the harbor, the skies cleared and there was just the slightest roll out of the southeast. Once we got near the ledge, the life just blossomed!

Fin whales were everywhere! We stopped the boat and saw blows as far as the eye could see in most all directions! We had several groups of 3-4 fin whales, which is a bit unusual for this area!

Three fin whales (2 backs and one dorsal fin tip!)

In one of the trios, as we pulled up along side, one of the whales did a barrel roll- something I've never seen in all my years of whale watching! This was a great opportunity to learn the gender- it's a girl!!

Fin whale rolling over!

And then another fabulous moment for research.....Ladder was here!! Ladder is a fin whale who we at Blue Ocean have been tracking since 1996, and who was first documented in 1984. Ladder was seen every year on Jeffreys Ledge from 2000-2007. But last year, Ladder was not seen! The year prior, he had some odd lesions on his back, so we were thinking that sadly, he was not well, and perhaps hadn't survived. You can't imagine our joy when mate Ryan and I saw him surface right along side us, with two of his friends!! Ladder is back and doing well!!

Ladder's white lower jaw

Ladder's distinctive propeller scars

Ladder is also one of our Adoptable whales making this an extra special sighting!

We then found another group of fin whales traveling with a group of Atlantic white sided dolphins! This is one of my favorite things to see- the very big, and the very small, all working together!

Two dolphins surfacing

All in all, we saw 16++ fin whales, 4 humpbacks, 2 minkes and at least 50+ Atlantic white sided dolphins. For anyone who thinks that whale watching is just about "humpback whale" watching, today surely proved them wrong. As we did find 4 humpbacks, we only saw the tail of two of them, and only one was the underside- the side that shows us who the whale is. The rest were sleepy and not fluking at all. Though whales have every right to be mellow, today just proved how any preconceived notions about whales could quickly and easily thrown out the door. Humpback Whale, Milkyway

And though we had to cancel our bird watching trip this morning, we did see lots of bird activity this afternoon including all 4 species of shearwaters, gannets, common terns and Wilson's storm petrels. Good times were had by all!

Wilson's storm petrels

Thanks to all of our hardy passengers who knew better than to stay on land on this hot and steamy day, and to our captain, Billy, who made the right decision.


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