July 8 Granite State

Yesterday's surprising sighting of a Sperm whale made the decision an easy one for us to head back to the area and press our luck to see if this animal by complete chance was still nearby. We searched and came up empty handed today but by no means were we out of luck. We were only a few miles away from where there has been plenty of whales around and today was no different. We ended up recording 10 different Humpback whales we either stopped to take a look at or saw out in the distance as visibility and ocean conditions made for a distinct horizon and bright white spouts against a overcast sky.

Our first stop was Satula as we actually saw this whale jump clear out of the water twice as we made our way towards this animal. Even from a distance, seeing a 20+ ton creature gain enough momentum and speed to leap from the water and crash down on the surface is an incredible sight.

We then ended up in an area where we were seeing whale spouts in all directions. Up and down these animals were surfacing, changing directions, and crossing paths. With other whale watching boats in the area, we all gave these animals plenty of space as there were more than enough whales for all the boats to watch and spread out with. We ended up coming across Mudskipper and her calf, along with Sloop in the area, before getting some looks at Literal who came up filtering water out of its mouth a few times.

Sloop above and Literal below. Amazing how drastically different each Humpback whale's tail can be!

We are all excited to have Mudskipper and her calf continuing to make their presense known on Jeffreys Ledge this season as this is the first year Mudskipper has been seen with a calf. Another new mom to add to the list of reproductive females for the population of Humpback whales here in the Gulf of Maine. Keep up the good work first-time Mom!!

Mudskipper going on a deeper dive

Thanks for everyone who joined us today. The weather was in our favor as the rain stayed just far enough south to avoid any sprinkles during our trip, giving us lots of great time out on the deck watching the whales. Congrats to our first-time whale watchers who got a chance to see so many animals, and to those of you who revisited the boat and Jeffreys Ledge once again. We always enjoy when our passengers are as excited and appreciative for the whales as much as we are!


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Atlantic Queen July 7

Keep in touch!Become a Fan on Facebook Follow Us On Twitter Here is a nice photo of Sabot's distinctive tail markings, she was with us today with her new 2011 calf, they were just being lazy on the surface enjoying the calm sea's and warm sun. We also spent time with Hornbill and Nile and a couple minke whales, what will today bring? Come on out and find out.

July 7th, Granite State...Surprise, Surprise

Over the past several days, we have seeing a number of different whales, some juveniles, along with some adults. Well, today was all about the adult Humpback whales. This morning we started in the general area of Jeffrey's Ledge where the whales have been over the last several days. We had several whales in the area and they were spread out, which was a nice thing so we could try and spend time with almost every individual. We spent time with Fulcrum, Satula(one of our adopt-a-whales), Hornbill, and Nile.

Fulcrum, an adult female, was first sighted in 1997 and had one calf. She survived a ship strike many years ago. Take a look at her mangled dorsal fin. We are happy that she is back and safe during another feeding season.

Below is Hornbill, an adult male, first sighted in 1977! He is an oldie, but a goodie!

One of our adopt-a-whale's was sighted as well. Satula gave us some great looks and I want to thank Melody and Tami for adopting him today!

We had such a nice morning and we were anxious to have more people join us for our afternoon adventure.

During our afternoon trip, we were pleasantly surprised to find some of the same whales that we had sighted during the morning. We did however find a different individual among the other adults in the area. I'm happy to report that Scylla, an adult female, is back on Jeffrey's Ledge and today was the first time we have seen her this season! We were all excited to see her once again. Here she is photographed below.

After spending quality time with all our whales from the afternoon, we received a radio call from our friends on the Prince of Whales. They had a young, 2 year old Humpback whale that had a fish gear entanglement and they had called us to see if we could try and relocate it. When one finds an entangled whale, it is best to try and stand by as long as possible, that is until the appropriate people can get out to the area where the whale may be to try and disentangle it. The Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies is the organization responsible for all our large whale disentanglement efforts. The Prince of Whales had contacted them about this whale and they were on their way. The area where the whale was last sighted was actually on our way home, so we decided to explore to see if we would have any luck in finding the injured whale. While on our way there, our captain spotted something very unusual in the water. It was a large rounded object seen above the surface, then it disappeared. Could it be the entangled whale that may have moved to a different area. The captain, myself, and crew all saw it the second time and were just as confused as the first sighting from our captain. The third time it surfaced, it took a breath and we realized what we had and were all in shock. It was an adult Sperm Whale! Yes, I said Sperm whale! We couldn't believe our eyes. They are the largest toothed whale, at about 50 feet long and feed on squid. It stayed along the surface for a long time, then slipped underneath the surface for several minutes. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity and I simply could not get over that we were watching a Sperm whale. You can see this whale below.

We informed another whale watch vessel in the area to our finding and waited for them to arrive before leaving the whale. With a sighting that rare, we had to share the good news! We were running late, but still wanted to head towards the area where the entangled whale had been and we were several miles away from that location. We started to head that way and informed all our passengers as to why we were doing so. Our passengers were great and understood the need to try and find the whale. We were not sure what would happen, but we needed to try! As we got closer, we saw a small boat heading into the area. It was the Ibis, the whale rescue boat from PCCS and they had made it to the area. As we both searched, we accidentally found some dolphins in the area. As our passengers looked at the dolphins, the crew looked all around for the entangled whale. The dolphins were on the right side of our boat and we happened to glimpse over to our left side and spotted an exhalation from a larger whale. It came up only one time, but were hopeful that it may be the whale in need of help. After a short period of time, it surfaced again and it was the entangled whale we were trying to locate. We got in touch with the Ibis over the radio and led them to the whale. Here they are heading to the entangled whale. Rescuing large whales is a dangerous, but heroic job and we were hopeful that they would get the job done. Thank you to all our passengers for helping us relocate this whale. You may have potentially saved a whale's life today!
As I am writing this post, I just received word that the PCCS team was able to help this 2 year old whale! Thank you again to all our passengers for your patience and assistance in relocating this young whale.

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July 6th, Granite State

We started the morning in an area of Jeffrey's Ledge about 20 miles from Rye harbor. Our first large whale of the day was an adult Humpback named Sloop, an adult female, first seen in 1987. Here she is photographed below.

Throughout our morning, we saw several Fin whales and Humpback whales within our area, but felt a little disoriented because all the Fin whales were charging around and changing directions quite frequently, and it made for a confusing time. It can get overwhelming when their are a lot of whales around, especially when you are trying to figure out who's who and you can start to lose track quite quickly sometimes. We were able to get good looks at mostly all the whales we saw, but our highlight of the morning had to be spending time with a pair of Humpback whales, Sabot and her calf. At one point, Sabot's calf became curious about the boat and came in for a closer look. Baby whales are just so cute!

Sabot did not stay to far away, keeping a close eye on her young baby! It was a great way to end our morning trip and we were looking forward to getting back out to Jeffrey's Ledge!

During our afternoon trip we found several Humpback whales, including Sloop and Flicker. As we spent time with them, we were also looking around the area for some of the Fin whales that were sighted earlier in the day and to our surprise, we couldn't find any of them. We have no idea where they travelled off to, but that sometimes happens when you work with wild animals. These whales are always on the move in search of food. I always try to tell people that every trip is truely a new experience and that sightings can change very quickly and this was definitely the case between our two trips. However, the nice thing was that we were able to relocate Sabot and her calf and during our time watching them, the calf became very active along the surface. The calf tail breached, chin breached, and full body breached several times. There are many theories behind these rare behaviors, but no one knows the exact reason why it occurs.

Sabot's calf seem to be very playful, which sometimes happens with new babies. As you can tell, even calves make quite a big splash!

Thank you to all our passengers who joined us today.
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July 7 Prince of Whales

What a crazy day. We started our day with Crazy Situation #1- seeing 4 huge fin whales only 6 miles offshore! Typically we have to travel at least 10 miles before seeing any sort of large whale but now and then, when the bait moves in, so do the whales! We got some amazing looks at the second largest animal on Earth!

Fin whales surfacing and feeding, only 6 miles off the Merrimack River!

We continued along in search of more whales a bit further out. After a lot of searching, we finally saw a spout. This whale was elusive at first and I didn't even know what kind of whale we were looking at! Then the distinctive white flippers appeared next to the boat- even 10 feet under water, I could tell this was a humpback whale. Humpback whales got their scientific name, Megaptera novaeangliea, from their huge flippers. The name means "big winged New Englander" as their flippers appear to be wings and they were first documented in New England waters.

Humpback whale with huge white "wings"

Unfortunately, I knew this particular whale right away. It was the same whale we saw entangled in orange rope last month. The good part is that it is still alive. The bad part is that it is still entangled. We had excellent lighting and sea surface conditions today to better document the whale and the rope. And the disentanglement team from Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies was already on the water (60 miles away) and could respond to the dire situation.

Although the orange line wasn't completely obvious, this whale was in a lot of distress and has a very severe wound around the base of its tail. Last we heard, the disentanglement team found the whale but we haven't heard any more updates. I will be sure to post any updates here as soon as they come in.

Although I am happy we could do our part to help this whale, I am still discouraged that whales continue to become entangled in rope/fishing gear, and are still being hit by boats (see July 5th's post) in spite of all of our best efforts to protect these huge endangered animals. Be assured we are doing all we can to learn more about these animals to determine the best methods for protection and we are hoping to get future funding to remove derelict (ghost) fishing gear from the water to reduce the chance that an animal gets tangled up in the non-working lines and nets.

Thanks to all of our caring passengers especially for your patience as we tried to get photos of the whale and make calls to those who need to know and could help.

**This just in- the disentanglement team just texted saying the attempt to free the whale went well. Details will be posted tomorrow. Thanks again to everyone involved!!**

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July 6 Atlantic Queen Trip

Whew!  What a long, wonderful day.  Had a beach cleanup after our whale watch... our terrific volunteers collected 16 lbs of litter from Jenness Beach, although it seemed like much more than that, as the trash was comprised of little pieces of plastic, Styrofoam, and cigarette butts, necessitating lots of bending over to pick up litter.  Am just now getting to look at photos and see who was who!

Had a total of 8 humpbacks today - we got good looks at 6 of them, and there were at least 2 more being watched by other boats, and I think several more in the distance. Plenty to see today!

One of my favorite humpbacks, Sloop, was out there. Sloop was born in 1987 and has a sail-like marking on her right fluke.  She surprised us by doing a full breach - not once, but twice!! Did I get pictures of it? No!! But she immediately started flipper-slapping, and that looked like this:

Then we spent some time with our friend Satula, a whale first sighted in 1988.  Satula is Finnish for "saddle," a name that apparently references the black marking on his left fluke.

Satula

Satula incoming!

I don't mean to get too graphic here, but there's an interesting thing about Satula. I think he might have one of the most regular digestive systems of all the whales I've seen in the Gulf of Maine.  In probably 80% of the pictures I have of Satula's tail, you can see evidence of "processed whale food" (as our Research Coordinator Dianna so eloquently calls it... or what "used to be krill" as our friend Willy puts it!).  In the image below, you might see some pinkish stuff below his tail - evidence that he's fed recently!

On to more fun topics. We then spent time with Mudskipper and her precocious little calf, who spent a little time away from its mom today, checking out its surroundings. It's always great to see new members of the Gulf of Maine humpback population!

Mudskipper and calf

And lastly, we spent some time with Flicker, a whale first seen in 2008. Flicker did a surprise tail breach!

Thanks to all our terrific passengers today... and congratulations to our lucky raffle winner - enjoy your adoption of Owl!

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July 5 Prince of Whales

Today was a bittersweet day on the Ledge. We saw a grand total of 8 fin whales and 2 humpback whales, but the 2 humpbacks were injured, and one of them was a fresh injury.

We began our day by seeing a couple of large fin whales not all that far offshore. We are still working on the ID's of these animals but based on their dorsal fins, we have seen them earlier this season.

Then we spotted a smaller blow. This was a young humpback whale we have been seeing quite a bit of this summer- a two year old whale that was born to Siphon back in 2009.

Siphon's 2009 calf swimming behind our boat

As we were watching this familiar whale, we noticed a new injury to its right side. The last time we saw the right side of this whale was less than 72 hours ago, so the injury is very new.

Dorsal fin of Siphon's 2009 calf showing a new fresh wound just below the fin

Close up of the new injury

This appears to be caused by a recent collision with a small boat, and we have been seeing several small boats in the area in the past few days making close approaches to this whale. Overall, the injury is small and minor and we will keep a close eye out for future sightings of this whale to monitor its condition.

We had another fin whale in the area with this young humpback. It was a great opportunity to see the contrast in size between humpback and fin whales!

On our way home, we saw a few more spouts. One of these came from the 14 year old female humpback whale named Fulcrum. Several years ago, a small boat ran right over the top of Fulcrum, mangling her dorsal fin and reducing it to just shards.

Fulcrum's damaged dorsal fin

Lucky for Fulcrum, the impact did not kill her and she appears to be doing fine, and even had another calf in 2009. Seeing whales injured due to human carelessness and ignorance frustrates me immensely as we at Blue Ocean Society work very hard to protect not only the whales but also their habitat through our research, educational and beach clean up programs. Other whale watch boats we work with have posted similar, recent events here on this blog over the past weekend, recanting stories about private boaters attempting to get as close as possible to feeding whales, putting themselves AND the whales at risk.

Humpback whale named Fulcrum diving

Fin whales seemed to be all around us throughout the afternoon. This one was circling quickly to catch some fish!

Fin whale spout

Fin whale chevron markings

I would like to thank all of our caring passengers who diligently watched these whales with awe and enthusiasm, and especially to our generous passengers who adopted whales today! Thank you! We couldn't do what we do without you!

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