July 28, Granite State

What a day to spend time on the ocean. We truely did have ideal conditions, with clear skies and calm seas, we were anxious to get to Jeffrey's Ledge. We headed toward more of a North eastern area of Jeffrey's in hopes of finding cetacean activity on a day that was simply gorgeous. It was a great day for a boat ride, but finding and watching whales is always our focus.

We saw a couple of blue sharks throughout our travels, but continued on since they can be quite elusive around boats and seem to slip right underneath the surface when we try and get a good look. After travelling about 20 miles or so, we came upon our first whale of the day. Well, that one whale turned out to be a pair of fin whales. One of these whales was identified as #0911 and we are still currently trying to ID the second whale in the area. After a brief time of these whales travelling together, they decided to separate and swim independently of each other, so we had to decide which one to watch and we stayed with the unknown in the area.

As we were watching this whale, a few of our passengers located on the bow of the boat starting pointing down towards the water and I looked to see what they were pointing at and to my surprise, there was an ocean sunfish right next to us. They are the largest bony fish in the world and can grow to be over 10ft. in diameter. This one was a bit smaller, but a very unique sight to have in the area.

After spending time with the Fin whales we had in the area, our friends on the Nick's Chance had found another species in the area, an adult humpback whale. They were going to be leaving shortly, so we decided that it would be a great way to end our morning trip. It turned out to be Chickadee, who was born in 2006 to a female named Rapier. We were able to get great looks at this whale as it was taking short dive intervals due to all the food that was deep underneath the surface. Chickadee is photographed below.

Our afternoon weather proved to be just as nice as the morning and we were anxious to get back out to the Ledge. As we approached the Ledge, our first whale of the afternoon was an adult fin whale. This fin whale however, was not any of the individuals that we had had during the morning. This whale was identified as #0622. Take a look at the unique shape to this whale's dorsal fin photographed below.

We decided after getting great looks at fin whale #0622, to explore further east to see if we would have luck finding more whales. Shortly after we were under way, we spotted another spout on the horizon. Once we travelled closer to the area, the whale spouted and lifted it's tail above the surface. We had found a humpback whale and we were lucky enough to find the same whale that we had during our monring trip, Chickadee. Our encounter with Chickadee included continual feeding behavior, where this whale was filtering water out of its mouth every time it surfaced. We were also witness to several close encounters with this whale and it was a spectacular sight. Here is a series of surfacings from Chickadee.

We ended our whale watch with a second fin whale and our passengers expressed their thanks to all of us for their experience today.

Thank you to all our first time visitors and the may frequent flyers who joined us today. It was a pleasure to share some of our whale friends with you.

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