Tuesday's Adventure on the Granite State

Another unexpected day on the boat today. For those of you who joined us this morning we started off our whale watch with a great display of Mother Nature. We had a slight delay on our way out towards Jeffreys Ledge when a quick moving storm passed through the area. Once the boat had gotten a great fresh water wash we continued on and ended up spending the rest of the morning in the sunshine with the whales. One of our highlights was when our hardy passengers got to see a new mother/calf Humpback pair to our area. The mother never raised her tail for us to get an easy ID on her but she has a distinct dorsal fin which will help in the process of finding out who the mother we saw actually is. You can see in this photo that the adult female at one point came charging through the water where Atlantic Bluefin Tuna had been working an area of bait fish while many pelagic birds were busily trying to catch the fish and plankton as well. The humpback whale came lunging sideways with her mouth wide open and in just seconds caught her own mouthful of food. I also found it quite a sight to see a plethera of Wilson's Storm Petrels, pictured below, actively scouring and finding their food source of plankton in this particularly productive area.

From here we pressed on and found a Humpback whale, Crisp, being quite active and spent some quality time with this animal. We saw this whale flipper slap over two dozen times. Not only was this a great sight to see but Crisp has very unique flippers. The dorsal side Crisp's flippers are all black while the underside are all white. It is something seldom seen for the Atlantic population of humpback whales and so it was fun to see such a contrast between the two sides when this whale was belly up and slapping both flippers. Of course the show stopper was when Crisp breached close enough for our passengers to really get a feeling of just how large these mammals are.It was awesome! It was even more exciting when I had my camera focused on the right spot and got a picture of this amazing, and rare, behavior. We saw other activity from more whales in the area and ended up finding a couple other Humpback whales doing other behaviors such as kick feeding and making bubble nets to corral their food this morning.

On our way back to Rye Harbor we ended up passing through an area which had at least 6 different Fin whales charging around in circles lunge feeding as they went! Incredible.

The afternoon trip surprised us with a bit of fog but that wasn't stopping us from searching for more activity. We started off our trip with 4 Fin whales all in one area and a Humpback whale that we aboard the Granite State have yet to see this year and are still in the process of trying to identify. Even though we don't yet know which Humpback whale we had it was still great to know another animal has made it's way to Jeffreys Ledge in search of food this season. What a great find. We also had a couple Minke whales pop up in the area where all these animals were which clearly was a hot spot for whale sightings.

Other findings of interest this afternoon included our familiar Humpback whale Flask, one of Blue Ocean Society's adopt-a-whale's, and favorite for our naturalist! We also found another unknown Humpback whale that still needs to get identified and more Fin whales on our way home this evening. What a good day all around.

On a separate note I hope all of you who were able to support the Blue Ocean Society on their Fundraiser Cruise this evening enjoyed your time in Newburyport, MA. Time constraints regrettably were the reason for our absence but I know a major thank you is in order to the captain and crew of the Prince of Whales for hosting the event. Thanks to everyone who made the cruise possible and I hope it was a success! And of course thanks to all that support this non-profit organization all year long in any way you can!


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