August 3 Granite State

This morning's trip had an unwelcome surprise as the weather was pretty much exactly the opposite of what the forecast was calling for. Instead of sunny skies, no wind, and calm seas it turned out to be mainly cloudy skies, a nice swell, and just enough wind to make the ride a bit up and down. Alas the sun finally came out and the seas calmed (eventually) but hey, we go with the flow, and like to use the forecast more as a guideline not so much as a definite fact. :)  Anyway we found a Minke whale quite inshore of Jeffreys Ledge. 

Minke whale (above and below)

Based on the photographs taken today I do believe it is even the same whale we saw yesterday afternoon! This Minke whale was still moving through the area and allowed for us to get some great looks at this wild mammal. We then headed further offshore to search for other whales but came up short. Searching other areas of the ocean is how we find whales so if we don't go searching we may not know if more whales are around. Sometimes we get lucky and find them and sometimes we don't but, if you don't try you'll never know!

This afternoon we headed back to where we had spotted our Minke whale from this morning. No luck. We were not seeing it. So we pressed on to other areas where whales have been. We ended up in an area where we were able to relocate another Minke whale. Great, a whale! Oh wait...not so great. This animal was only taking a couple breaths at the surface, moving around a lot, and with other boats in the area we decided it was best to see if we could perhaps find another whale to look at. Our travels continued and soon we were seeing splashing in the distance. Could it be? Yep, there were dolphins ahead of us! There were only a few whales in the group and got some great looks as they surfaced in our wake and alongside the boat before diving below the ocean surface. 

Two of the four Atlantic white-sided dolphins we saw for a brief moment in time this afternoon

Then we waited and waited some more. Really? Again? These dolphins had disappeared. We soon came to realize that as easily as these whales had appeared they also decided to disappear just as quickly.

The whales appeared to not be on our side today but as we have seen in the past they are constantly switching things up on us so we shall see what the ocean has in store for us once again tomorrow!

 

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