Friday, July 10

The whales are still far away but well worth the drive. This morning, however, our first sighting was really sad. We came upon a deceased minke whale. We approached the whale even though we knew it would be depressing, and not the best way to start off a whale watch, but we need to do our part in documenting these cases in order to learn more about them and alert the various stranding groups in case this whale washes ashore. We rarely see dead whales in our area so this was an unusual event.

We continued on to the northern end of Jeffreys Ledge and found a small group of Atlantic white sided dolphins! These dolphins have been rare this season so we were pretty excited to see these. The pod was moving around quickly but did take some time to check us out for a couple minutes.

Further along this morning we found 3 humpback whales- Sedge, who has been seen several times this season, Gondolier, who was is a new visitor to the area, and Pinball, one of Blue Ocean Society’s adoptable humpback whales!!   

Gondolier

Gondolier

 

 

Sedge

The whales were likely feeding and following schools of fish- they were circling around the area and surfaced close to us several times.

This afternoon we headed back up to the northern end of Jeffreys Ledge. On our ride, we encountered a big basking shark!! This one was really big and really mellow. We got some amazing looks at this 2^nd largest species of shark in the world! 

Basking Shark- R. Murillo photo

 Up on the Ledge, we found humpback whales Pinball and Gondolier once again. Pinball was staying put mostly while Gondolier seemed to be searching around the area.

Pinball

Pinball rainbow blow

Blowholes!

 The afternoon was beautiful and summer weather is here!