July 26-27, 2023

 July 26-27, 2023

Wednesday morning, as we were getting close to the area where whales have been seen recently, we found a small pod of Atlantic white sided dolphins! This group was moving around pretty quickly, like chasing down some fish. Dolphins are always fun to watch, even when they are busy! Then we saw humpback whales. Pinball and her calf were moving relatively fast to the south. We stayed with them for a bit before checking out another whale in the area. This one was Jawa, who has been seen in our area before but isn’t one of our regulars. Jawa wasn’t traveling but instead was feeding, as evidenced by the bubble cloud he blew to concentrate his prey. We started for home but got sidetracked by another humpback, Clamp! After a quick look, we continued our trek. Close to the harbor, we passed a couple of small groups of shy harbor porpoises.

On our trip offshore, we were treated to two unique sights! The first was of the tall ship, Lynx, as it headed to Portsmouth Harbor for the tall ship parade on Thursday, and Sail Portsmouth Tall Ship Festival this weekend! Then we saw a barge carrying an excavator and boulders. It’s not too often to see heavy equipment offshore! We returned to the same area Wednesday afternoon and found more humpback whales! We also got a rare glimpse of harbor porpoises acting calm and staying at the surface for more than a few seconds! Amazing! Satula was seen first, and then we saw some splashing in the distance. That turned out to be Gondolier repeatedly slapping his huge, white flipper on the surface! So cool! Humpback flippers are 15 feet long! Pinball and her calf were also in the area. At one point, the pair dove and swam right under our boat, about 80 feet below us! Cool! Next, we saw Dyad, a new visitor to the area this year, and then our last whale was again Clamp! Another fantastic day on the ocean!

Thursday morning was overcast and a little breezy compared to recent days, but we like to call it “refreshing”! As we made our way to Jeffreys Ledge, we passed by some harbor porpoises. Approaching the hot spot, we were extremely surprised when a humpback whale, Satula, breached out of the blue right next to the boat! After a couple looks at him, another humpback made her way into the area- Clamp! We also watched Gondolier for a little bit before ending with Valley and her calf. Valley also surprised us by leaping out of the water! Our ride home was pretty calm as we had the increasing wind at our back. Thursday afternoon, we decided to stay on land since the forecast was for strong winds and thunder and lightning storms.