Saturday's Atlantic Queen Trip

Flask

Whew! After a crazy, busy summer, Labor Day weekend is finally here. It's always a bittersweet time for me. I love being out on the water so much during the summer, but I also need to start catching up on all of our other projects going on here, and the fall is when we start to do that. I also love when September comes because it's my favorite month for whale watching - it's still fairly warm out, the hurricanes (usually) have not started to hit with much regularity yet, and the sightings are often wonderful!

We saw several humpbacks today, but the species that stole the show (at least for me) were the fin whales. We saw at least 15-20 different fin whales today, and I'm still going through our data trying to make some sense of all the sightings!

One of our first sightings was of a fin whale lunge-feeding in the distance. Even at over 1/2 mile away, it created a huge, white wave as it sped to the surface. Then we saw a trio of fin whales cruising around together. Imagine - likely over 200 feet of whale in one small square of the ocean! We then came upon a pair of fin whales, including one of my favorites - Fjord, a whale we've seen many times this season, and also one of our adoptable whales! Fjord is truly a Jeffreys Ledge regular - we see him just about every year.

Fjord, one of our favorite fin whales

Another fin whale, showing how huge they are!

After seeing several fin whales, we found one of our favorite humpbacks, a male named Flask. Flask surprised us at one point and rolled over briefly and raised his 15-foot long flippers in the air.

Flask, a male first sighted in 1982

We saw a couple other humpbacks at a distance, one who lunged a few times at the surfaced, and also a couple minke whales. We then moved on to what is usually a real crowd-pleaser - a really active pod of Atlantic white-sided dolphins! This pod of about 75 included several moms and their 3-foot long calves, and several active dolphins who showed us how high dolphins could leap! (If only my camera wasn't pointed the wrong way when 2 of the dolphins leaped about 4' in the air at the same time...)

Atlantic White-sided Dolphin

Dolphins and passengers. Do you see yourself here?

The one really sobering thing for me were all the boats zipping around the area. Boats and whales must co-exist here in New England, but I'll never understand why people don't take more notice of big boats that say "WHALE WATCH" all over them, and don't realize that they need to exercise caution when transiting the area. I was the unlucky witness to a fin whale getting hit by a sport boat 2 years ago, and replay that disturbing image in my head every time another careless boat speeds through an area where we're watching whales. If you happen to be a boater reading this, please help us by using caution and keeping a close eye out on the water at all times, especially if you're more than a few miles offshore. You can also download your own copy of the whale watching guidelines for the Northeast Region here.

Ok, I'm off my soapbox. Overall, beautiful weather and calm seas made for a really enjoyable day. Thanks to those who came aboard! And if you're interested in adopting Flask, Fjord, or any of our other 9 adoptable marine creatures, click here!

Fin whale with boat approaching

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