Our morning started out with flat calm seas and our first whale of the day turned out to be a humpback named Chickadee. This whale was born in 2006 and has been continually feeding in our area for several days. Chickadee is a pleasure to watch and loved to be close to the Granite State!
As we continued off shore, we saw two spouts in the distance and it turned out to be a pair of fin whales. As we got closer and got a good look at the whales, we quickly realized that one of them was very familiar to us...it was Ladder! Ladder is one of our adopt-a whales and he always seems to travel with other whales, and yet again, that was the case today. We have only seen Ladder one other time this season, so it was great to see him again. We are still working on identifying the whale with Ladder and will keep you posted as to who that whale may be. As we were watching these fin whales, they continued to feed in the area and made a couple of close approaches. Just look at our plankton sample from this morning. I know these aimals may be tiny, but they are very nutrient rich!
One of our passengers approached the pilot house and informed me that she had just adopted Ladder last week and couldn't believe that she was able to actually see this whale in person. It was a morning that was meant to be! Thank you Brenda for sharing your touching story and for continuing your patronage by adopting Satula today!
The afternoon sea breeze kicked up and made for bumpy ride back to Jeffrey's Ledge. We wondered if our whales from the morning would still be around. Well...we didn't see any of our whales from the morning, but we were able to spend quality time with a very large fin whale, #9904. This whale stayed close by and gave all our passengers an idea as to just how large it was.
After spening time with fin whale #9904, we heard of other cetacean activity in the area and decided to check it out. It turns out that our friends on the Prince of Whales had a mother, calf humpback pair and were going to be heading home shortly. They were getting some last looks as we approached the area and as we did, the calf breached off our right side...then mom decided to follow suit and breached as well! What a sight to see mom and calf breach one after the other. It turned out to be mudskipper and her new calf. Both the Prince of Whales and ourselves witnessed such a rare occurence and the calf continued to be quite acobatic throughout the afternoon.
I want to thank our hardy passengers for joining us for quite an adventure today!
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