June 25 and 26 on the Granite State

It has been a busy few day (thanks to the whales!) and I am anxious to report all the sights we have seen over the last few days. Yesterday, June 25, was a great day. Not only did we find 7 different Fin whales out on the water in the morning, two of them were a Mother/calf pair!

This is the first Fin whale calf we aboard the Granite State have spotted this season. Not only is it great to know that this pair has come to Jeffreys Ledge to search for food, but it is not the only pair in the area! Our friends aboard the Prince of Whales also spotted a Mother/calf Fin whale pair (see posting below from the Prince of Whales) in a completely different region of Jeffreys Ledge! 2 Fin whale calves on the same day. How incredible.

For any on board either boat it was a sight to see. Imagine a large female Fin whale travelling along with it's calf, an animal when born, that can easily reach lengths of 20 feet long! While we have yet to match this Mom to our Fin whale catalogue Will, one of our trusty crew members, actually remembered seeing this whale years ago, all due to this whale's uniquely shaped dorsal fin! Thanks to a great memory and a few photographs, Will was able to trace back to August 2008 when this whale was spotted on Jeffreys Ledge. Of course it is possible this whale may have visited this area between then and now, so hopefully once we identify this animal we can look through our archives to see other documented sightings of the female Fin whale! With such a great find in the morning we all wondered how the afternoon trip could match up to our morning sightings. Little did we know what we were in store for.

With such good sightings in the morning we decided to head back to the same area in the afternoon for our trip on June 25. Turned out the whales that had been seen by us in the morning were nowhere to be found. Instead we came across 2 adult Fin whales travelling together.

One of the 2 Fin whales travelling around the area together

With a few more Fin whales in the area there was plenty to look at from all sides of the boat. After some time with these large animals we decided to see what else may have moved into the area in the past few hours. It didn't take long for us to find another species of whale, a Humpback whale.

The first Humpback we found was Hornbill, a whale first sighted in 1977. This whale was taking very long dives but giving our passengers some nice looks at the underside of this whale's tail as it would go down for a dive. We were seeing other whales in the distance and were just about to press on when..... SPLASH!

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a HUGE amount of white water. While I never saw what actually happened I knew this whale had just jumped out of the water! Well it was an easy decision to stay as this one jump was only the beginning. This whale breached multiple times, one jump after another! If we are ever so lucky to get a chance to witness this spectacular aerial display most of the time it occurs once. And during that one time, 90% of the time, most people including myself, are not even looking in that one particular spot! To have this animal continuously breaching so that EVERYONE had a chance to be amazed by a 30-ton whale literally throwing itself out of the water was quite the sight. Wow.

With more time to do some searching and Hornbill's afternoon activities ending we pressed on. Soon thereafter we saw more blows from whales. We had found another Fin whale and 3 more Humpback whales. The Fin whale was on the move so we stayed with the Humpback whales that were circling around the area. We found Satula a Humpback whale last seen on May 29. Where had this particular whale gone? While we do not know the answer it was great to see this animal back on the Ledge almost an entire month later. We also came across a pair of Humpback whales. It was Diablo and her 2010 calf! We definitely wanted to thank our passengers again for bearing with us as a few times we attempted to begin our journey home before the whales apparently wanted to keep us out there. Of course most of us on board were quite okay with the slight delays.

So comes today. It wasn't a hard decision for us to head back out to the same area as yesterday to see if anything had stuck around for the night. Since whales are wild animals and move freely throughout the ocean there was no guarantee what we might find, let alone perhaps some of the same whales. Well weren't we surprised!

We ended up finding 2 adult Fin whales moving through the water together. On the research aspect of this sighting, we were delighted to determine that these 2 animals were the same large whales we had seen during yesterday afternoon's whale watch travelling together! Had these animals really stayed with each other through the night? Whether they separated overnight or not, these 2 Fin whales were swimming close together and synchronizing surfacings. We even had a close encounter as both animals swam right alongside the boat and just off the pulpit! One look at a 60+ft Fin whale is impressive, let alone a look at 2 of these massive whales!

Our other exciting find this morning was another Humpback whale, but one we have yet to see on Jeffreys Ledge this season. It was Solas. This whale was last documented out on the Ledge on September 8, 2009. After more than 9 months later this whale has returned! Solas was a whale we saw a number of times during the 2009 season and so are happy to report this whale has made it through the winter months and is back to find food.

This afternoon we again were anxious to make our way back to the Ledge to see what surprises we were going to find. It didn't take long to find our first! We came across as very slow moving pod of Atlantic white-sided dolphins! This group was spread out over a good distance so as we moved into the area everyone one board could get a chance to watch these whales. At least 100 of these dolphins were surrounding the area and since they appeared to be going nowhere fast we got some great looks. What a nice way to start our trip.

The rest of the afternoon consisted of 3 more species of whales! It was a Whale Grand Slam! 4 species of whales in one single trip. We saw Hornbill the Humpback whale (pictured below). We saw two individual Fin whales and we even saw a Minke whale close to the Isles of Shoals on the way home! Our large whales provided really nice looks for our passengers, all of whom were asking great questions on the ride home. During our travels to and from the Ledge we also saw 2 schools of Atlantic Bluefin tuna. These fish were coming up to the surface of the ocean creating lots of white water and attracting many birds to the area. These birds, mainly seagulls and shearwaters, were going after the small schooling fish the Tuna were chasing and bringing to the surface!

What a few crazy days and the weekend is not even over!

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