June 27- Prince of Whales- Newburyport

Great day out of Newburport today! 7 fin whales, 3 minkes an one humpback!
Below are a few images of today's trip!

Pixar feeding

Pixar flukes

Fin whale # 0527

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June 27 on the Granite State

While we always enjoy seeing any sort of marine activity out on the water, we tend to get intrigued when we happen to come across something a bit more unusual. Sometimes we see different birds, or sharks, or whales, that peak our interest in unexpected ways. Such was the case this morning.

Our crew, naturalist, and Blue Ocean Society summer intern, were all chatting with each other prior to the trip about Minke whales this morning. This particular species of whale is actually the only baleen whale not to be endangered. Population estimates are upwards of one million worldwide. Throughout the discussion we were commenting on how mom/calf Minke whale pairs have VERY RARELY been seen on Jeffreys Ledge and for that matter why we have never come across a Minke whale unusually small (a yearling perhaps). While we were throwing around different thoughts and potential reasons it was time to leave the dock and head offshore.

Well what do you know. . . our conversation became real life! The first whale we found today was an incredibly small Minke whale. This animal's size was relative to the Minke whales we normally see and have seen over the years on Jeffreys Ledge. While adult Minke whales can reach lengths of 20-30ft long, this particular animal was MAYBE 10-15ft long, if that at all! I know the photograph does not do much justice to gauge just how small this animal is but it was by far the "tiniest" anyone of us have ever seen!

Our Minke whale surfacing and then going on a deeper dive

Thanks to Heather our intern, she recorded the location and behaviors (down to the second!) of this animal. It will be interesting to see if we get a chance to see this whale again. Maybe get a chance to take more photographs and start to learn why we here in this region of the Gulf of Maine typically do not encounter such potentially young Minke whales.

Our Minke sighting was only the beginning as we found other Minke whales, multiple Fin whales, 2 Humpback whales, and even a Basking shark during our trips today.

One of the Fin whales we spent time watching today

A Humpback whale coming up to the surface to exhale and then take a breath of air

Some of our whales provided passengers the chance to see active feeding behaviors such as a whale filtering water through hundreds of baleen plates and a Fin whale side lunging through the water!

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June 26- Prince of Whales- Newburyport

Greater Shearwater taking off

After a very long day of searching and finding elusive whales, our patience finally paid off! We started with a fin whale that was traveling and then changed directions, a couple minke whales scooting about, and then a few more very elusive fin whales. At one point, fin whale #0611 popped up right next to us but then we never saw it again! Another much smaller fin whale moved in and actually circled the boat and even rolled over underwater in the process! What a big white belly!! But soon this curious whale moved off as well.

We decided to try our luck on Fin Whale Alley- an area to the west of Jeffreys Ledge that we crossed over early in the trip but didn't see anything at that point. FWA was true to its name this time! With the full moon bringing stronger tides, the bait fish and krill (small shrimp-like critters) really get pushed around a lot, keeping us, and the whales, on our toes so to speak.

We found a blow ahead of us and before we got to it, a minke popped up. This was not just any minke, but SCAR MINKE! I have been watching Scar Minke on Jeffreys Ledge nearly every year since 1995! How excited I was to see this whale back for another year! Scar Minke gets its name from the huge scar/indentation on its back just ahead of its dorsal fin- likely the result of an entanglement when it was young. As we tried to get photos of Scar Minke, a pair of fin whales surfaces. We were quickly running out of time so we scooted to the pair, seeing a glimpse of them just before they dove.

As we waited for another surfacing, a third fin whale blew ahead of us. Looking through the binoculars, I could see that this whale had a handful of dolphins with it! We left the pair to see this awesome sight- one of the largest whales swimming with some of the smallest! I must admit, watching fin whales and dolphins together is one of my favorite whale watching moments. The size difference is amazing but really, it is the ease of keeping track of the big whale that is so much fun! The dolphins seem to follow the fin whale while it is down on a dive, so all we need to do is keep track of the dolphins, and the fin whale nearly always surfaces right with them!

Fin whale creating a "bow wave" while surfacing!

Fin whale #0532's chevron pattern

Fin whale #0532's dorsal fin

Fin whale #0532 surfacing with dolphin escorts!

Fin whale barely breaking the surface with dolphins in the background

Thanks to everyone for coming with us today and for your generous support to our organization!


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Atlantic Queen, Saturday - Crazy Dolphins!

Great day on the water today! We cruised for awhile and then came upon some splashing, which turned out to be a giant pod of dolphins! There were probably well over 200 of them, and we could see them all around the boat, just about everywhere we looked. As an added bonus, they were also very active, with lots of leaping and “surfing” in our wake.

Here's our volunteer, Dan, watching one of the dolphins leaping in our wake:

Then we got a report of a humpback whale, which turned out to be ‘Hornbill,’ a male first seen in 1977! He was already an adult then, which means this whale is at least 40 years old.

Regarding his name - hornbills are a type of bird with a huge, usually curved bill. The bill has a bony projection on top. I imagine his name has to do with the large black mark in the middle of his fluke, but I still can’t quite make the connection. Can you?

We left Hornbill and turned for home, and then were surprised to see another small pod of dolphins busily working the surface. A great day, and evidence that there’s plenty of life on the Ledge! Thanks to all who joined us!

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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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June 25- Prince of Whales- Newburyport

What a great day near the Ledge today! Fin whales seemed to be everywhere! Great looks at a mellow mom/calf pair, then a few single fins, a smattering of minkes, awesome looks at basking sharks and then some surprising fin whales just a few miles off shore! The water was so calm we could see the entire length of the whales underwater! I will try to post more details in a bit but for now, here are some of our photos from the trip!

Fin whale mom and calf- the calf was nursing!

Fin Whale 9709 with new scars on tail area

Fin Whale 9709 giving us a surprisingly close look as she surfaced next to the boat!

Huge basking shark!

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Perfect Day on the Atlantic Queen

We had so many great surprises today on the Atlantic Queen. We started out with a very close approach from this enormous Fin whale, you can see perfectly the white lower jaw color. This whale stayed close by for many surfaces which really excited our passengers. The highlight of the day was a breaching male Humpback by the name of "Hornbill" Our friends on the Granite State let us know they were heading off and left Hornbill to us, as the Granite State was slowly leaving Hornbill did a full breach!! followed by a head breach, I admit I missed alot of photos due to excitement! I was able to catch this one photo of him though. We first saw Hornbill in 1996! He made us late to return to Rye Harbor but it was so worth it!

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