Friday, September 29

Boy have we been lucky to generally have such calm seas recently. Add in a plethora of wildlife to watch and it was another successful day in the Gulf of Maine today! We saw 2 ocean sunfish, 9 humpback whales (in pairs and even a group of 4) and a pod of ~25 Atlantic white-sided dolphins during our trip.

Ocean sunfish

Can you spot all 4 humpback whales in this image?

Tight-knit grouping of Atlantic white-sided dolphins

The humpback whales we recognized included Spoon, Sword, Shuffleboard, A-plus, Reaper, Othello and Pitcher.

Sword and Spoon

A-plus and Shuffleboard

Pitcher

Some of our humpback whales were resting, others slowly traveling along and one even flipper-slapped multiple times. As if these moments weren't special enough we got a chance to check out some inter-species associations as our group of dolphins were associated with our group of 4 humpback whales!

Large flipper high in the air

Humpback whales and dolphins!

Humpback whale still flipper-slapping as the dolphins remained associated with these larger mammals