Sept 4 & 5 on the Prince of Whales- Newburyport

As we always say in whale watching, no two trips are ever alike. Well, sometimes we are wrong! Friday's and Saturday's trips were unusually very similar. Both days we saw lots of fin whales- at least 8 each day, with lots of pairs around. We also had 3 humpback whales each day, and oddly enough, they were the same individuals: Tigris, Solas and distant looks at Flask. A minke whale or two popped up here and there, and some shy harbor porpoises were seen briefly. Then on our way back in we encountered a pod of Atlantic white sided dolphins! The only real difference was that Tigris was doing a bit of feeding on Saturday, blowing a bubble cloud and surfacing vertically in the middle of it! What will we see tomorrow??

Friday, Sept 4th images:

Two fin whales surfacing

Tigris, first seen 32 years ago

Solas, an 8 year old humpback whale

Atlantic white sided dolphin surfacing close to the boat

Saturday, Sept 5th Images:

The above series is of a fin whale surfacing- takes at least 3 images to capture most of the whale's huge body!

Solas, an 8 year old humpback whale

Tigris, first seen 32 years ago!

Another view of Tigris' tail

Fish!

Tigris eating fish!! Check out the ventral grooves (chin/belly area) expanding and the water pouring out of his mouth!

Atlantic white sided dolphins

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Saturday's Atlantic Queen Trip

Flask

Whew! After a crazy, busy summer, Labor Day weekend is finally here. It's always a bittersweet time for me. I love being out on the water so much during the summer, but I also need to start catching up on all of our other projects going on here, and the fall is when we start to do that. I also love when September comes because it's my favorite month for whale watching - it's still fairly warm out, the hurricanes (usually) have not started to hit with much regularity yet, and the sightings are often wonderful!

We saw several humpbacks today, but the species that stole the show (at least for me) were the fin whales. We saw at least 15-20 different fin whales today, and I'm still going through our data trying to make some sense of all the sightings!

One of our first sightings was of a fin whale lunge-feeding in the distance. Even at over 1/2 mile away, it created a huge, white wave as it sped to the surface. Then we saw a trio of fin whales cruising around together. Imagine - likely over 200 feet of whale in one small square of the ocean! We then came upon a pair of fin whales, including one of my favorites - Fjord, a whale we've seen many times this season, and also one of our adoptable whales! Fjord is truly a Jeffreys Ledge regular - we see him just about every year.

Fjord, one of our favorite fin whales

Another fin whale, showing how huge they are!

After seeing several fin whales, we found one of our favorite humpbacks, a male named Flask. Flask surprised us at one point and rolled over briefly and raised his 15-foot long flippers in the air.

Flask, a male first sighted in 1982

We saw a couple other humpbacks at a distance, one who lunged a few times at the surfaced, and also a couple minke whales. We then moved on to what is usually a real crowd-pleaser - a really active pod of Atlantic white-sided dolphins! This pod of about 75 included several moms and their 3-foot long calves, and several active dolphins who showed us how high dolphins could leap! (If only my camera wasn't pointed the wrong way when 2 of the dolphins leaped about 4' in the air at the same time...)

Atlantic White-sided Dolphin

Dolphins and passengers. Do you see yourself here?

The one really sobering thing for me were all the boats zipping around the area. Boats and whales must co-exist here in New England, but I'll never understand why people don't take more notice of big boats that say "WHALE WATCH" all over them, and don't realize that they need to exercise caution when transiting the area. I was the unlucky witness to a fin whale getting hit by a sport boat 2 years ago, and replay that disturbing image in my head every time another careless boat speeds through an area where we're watching whales. If you happen to be a boater reading this, please help us by using caution and keeping a close eye out on the water at all times, especially if you're more than a few miles offshore. You can also download your own copy of the whale watching guidelines for the Northeast Region here.

Ok, I'm off my soapbox. Overall, beautiful weather and calm seas made for a really enjoyable day. Thanks to those who came aboard! And if you're interested in adopting Flask, Fjord, or any of our other 9 adoptable marine creatures, click here!

Fin whale with boat approaching

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Friday on the Big Blue Boat (AQ)

We had a great day on the water! We had Solas and Tigris, Atlantic White Sided Dolphin, Minke's and Fin whales. We also had 2 seal pups! The picture to left is a pup with a nice fresh herring in it's mouth! Above is a great look at a footprint left behind by Solas, a humpback whale, also some feeding. Thank you to all our spirited passengers, it was a pleasure having such an exciting group. Many thanks to Dan our new volunteer on the Atalntic Queen who has been very helpful to us. We will be whale watching weekends afer Labor day until Columbus Day weekend come on out!

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Friday On the Atlantic Queen

Beautiful day, beautiful sightings! We had a great day today on the Atlantic Queen. I am going to call it a grand slam! We had Solas the humpback and Tigris another humpback whale who both did some feeding for us below is Solas who is about to do some kick feeding! We also had a nice fin whale and a few minkes, minkes have not been around that much this season and I really do miss them. Our passengers were also happy to see a harbor seal pup with a herring in it's mouth, we actually saw 2 pups today. Lastly a playful group of Atlantic White Sided Dolphin. Thanks to Dan our new volunteer who has been very helpful to us, thanks Dan!

Granite State Sightings

A beautiful beginning to the holiday weekend and some great whale sightings to go along with the sunshine!

I will start with Thursday's trip which was an adventure of it's own. Our journey brought us to an area where we were seeing lots of exhalations from large whales around us but getting close looks at the critters proved to be the difficult task. We had a total of 6 different Fin whales, all of which seemed to be coming up for only a few breaths, before diving back down under the water for long dive intervals. By the time they resurfaced the whales had traveled a good distance in random directions and go right back down by the time we approached the area again. Needless to say we were all a bit frustrated but brought us all back into the reality that we go out in search of wild animals and we have absolutely no control over what these animals do and where they go.

After many attempts of watching these fin whales and getting a couple glances at a few, we decided to head further east in search of other whales. Our luck paid off when we came across another whale, a different species, a Humpback whale named Tigris. This particular whale was scooting around a bit as well but we were lucky to watch Tigris actively feed a couple times when this animal came up with it's mouth wide open collecting lots of fish! Quite a sight. After a few mouthfuls Tigris would travel a bit before circling around again and go after more food. A nice way to wrap up our trip.

Today we headed out towards Jeffreys Ledge but came across animals before we even got there! We found 11 Fin whales and 2 Humpback whales during today's adventure. We saw some amazing close encounters with a few of the Fin whales enabling us to check out the asymmetric coloring of their right side as these whale surfaced alongside the boat. Check out this Fin whale charging through the water it just pushes the ocean out of it's way!

Our Humpback whales of the day were Solas and Flask. Solas is pictured below. Both whales have been seen multiple times throughout our season this year but it's been a few weeks since our last sightings of these animals. The last time I personally saw Solas was on August 21 and Flask on August 19. It gets me thinking . . . where did these whales go? Have they been elsewhere on Jeffreys Ledge in search of food and no one else has come across them? Did they continue to travel further north to other feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine and just returned back to Jeffreys? So many questions . . .

Sometimes it's so interesting to realize with all that we know about whales there is still so much we have yet to learn about these massive mammals. We may not know everything yet but being able to look back at our data collected by all our Blue Ocean Society associates each season helps to begin to piece the missing parts together.

It was a fantastic day out on the water today and I hope for all of you who have recently joined us on board have enjoyed your time as well. A special thanks to my Mom for joining us today which turned out to be a special day for her since this was the first time she has ever seen Flask AND open mouth feeding from both humpback and fin whales!!!

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Thursday Sept 3 on the Prince of Whales

Cory's Shearwater

Lots of whales were around today but most of them were racing around and taking long dives, making our job a bit difficult. We found 7 fin whales, and managed to get several close looks.

Fin whale dorsal fin

We also found the lone humpback whale, Tigris. Tigris has been around for a while now, which I find interesting since this is the first year we have seen him here at all! Perhaps Jeffreys Ledge is his new favorite diner!

Tigris' tail- going down!

The birding activity was excellent- all 4 species of shearwaters were seen, plus a few northern gannets and several rafts of Wilson's storm petrels, evidence that plenty of fish and plankton are still in the area!


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Wednesday on the Prince of Whales-Newburyport

Today was another of those days that can really throw you for a loop. We headed out towards the Ledge hoping to see some fantastic marine life and we were not disappointed. However, today we found ourselves finding more activity on our way back home than we did on the Ledge itself!

We came upon one fin whale, and spent a few surfacings with it before continuing along. We then stumbled upon a mother/calf pair of fin whales!! Baby fin whales have to be my favorite animal to observe in the wild. The smallest of one of the biggest, the fin whale calf must be the cutest baby animal on the planet. We got some fantastic looks at this pair, and I believe this is just the 3rd baby fin whale we have observed all season!

Fin whale mother and calf above

Fin whale mother exhaling

As we kept moving on towards the NW, we passed by another fin whale to see a humpback whale- Tigris!
Tigris has been spending a lot of time on Jeffreys Ledge this summer and we are happy to have this 32+year old male as he tends to be seen further north in the Bay of Fundy/Nova Scotia!

Tigris' flukes above

As we started our way back to the West, we found several more fin whales, all of whom seemed to be alone. But then, upon photo analysis, we realized that all 3 fin whales grouped up for our final sighting! One of these whales was a friend we first identified last year- fin whale # 0826! Always nice to have repeat visitors!!

Fin whale # 0826

Another beautiful day on Jeffreys Ledge! Thanks for all who visited with us today!



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