Newburyport-Prince of Whales-May 30

For a holiday weekend, we had to work a little too hard to find whales today. I must admit, after many years working in the whale business, we can become a bit jaded. Most of our crew has been watching whales for all of their teenage and adult lives. We have been on literally thousands of whale watches to Jeffreys Ledge. Sometimes when we expect to find whales easily, Mother Nature humbles us with the reminder that whales are wild and are not on our time schedule.

We began our trip finding a minke whale right as we came upon the ledge. Minkes are 20-30 feet in length and can be erratic in their swimming and diving patterns. This one was great...once we figured out what it was doing. This minke was traveling in a fairly straight line to the SW. Captain Bill did a great job anticipating the whale's speed and course, giving us this lovely sighting right along side the boat:

Minke Whale Diving

We left the minke and continued on along the ledge. Reports from other whale watching and fishing boats were not favorable so we decided to explore areas that had not yet been covered. Exploring is the best way to find unique animals but can sometimes lead to what we call negative data- areas that we now know have no whales. Scientifically, this is good data since it is just as important to know where whales are AND where they are not. We were becoming discouraged and were running out of time quickly. We turned the boat to the west (toward the harbor) and were making our way back to shore when Captain Bill saw a blow from a larger whale!

This turned out to be a large fin whale (also called finback whale). Although this whale's dive times varied immensely, we were able to get a couple of decent looks at it. After downloading and enlarging the images tonight, I am ecstatic to report that this whale is a known individual and has been seen on Jeffreys Ledge before! Fin whale #0811 (sorry, no official name yet) was seen by Blue Ocean Society researchers in 2008! The unique dorsal fin shape and some body marks/scars confirmed this ID!

Fin whale # 0811

Thanks to all of our curious and understanding passengers today for your patience and dedication! We hope to see you again soon! And now we wonder what Mother Nature will bring us tomorrow :)

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