Sunday, September 15 2013

Excellent weather today, with flat seas and clear skies. We were able to find a great variety of whales as well. We saw about a half dozen minke whales, several groups of harbor porpoise, three fin whales, and two humpback whales. The humpbacks were identified as the whales Piña and Victim. The fin whales we saw are called Dingle, Fjord, and Comet.

This minke whale is swimming past some fishing gear and fishing boats. The search for food sometimes put humans and whales in the exact same location.

We started the day with a minke whale and some harbor porpoise, quite a bit inshore of where we usually see whales. If we see a whale very far inshore, it tends to be a minke whale. These smaller whales seem to be found sometimes in shallower water near shore. The minke whale is one of two species of baleen whales which aren't considered endangered in the U.S, but they are still always a treat to find on a whale watch.

Piña and Victim may have been doing some resting today, spending a lot of time at the surface moving very very slowly or not at all at times.

Once we traveled a little further out we were able to spot a couple of humpback whales which appeared to be doing some resting in the area. Whales find time to get some rest out on the water, and humpback whales sometimes float at the surface to take a break. Unlike toothed whales which sometimes live in family groups, Baleen whales don't live in groups and spend most of their time alone. Sometimes they join together to feed or, as we can see here with Piña and Victim, to take a little rests. These groups tend not to last long, from just a few minutes up to a couple of hours or days.

This humpback whale has some damage to its tail flukes. Despite the chunk missing from the flukes, this whale doesn't appear to have difficulty moving around or feeding. Many humpback whales in the Gulf of Maine show signs of injury inflicted by human activity (boat strikes and entanglements in fishing gear are the most common).

While we were watching the humpbacks we noticed a spot in the distance and moved over to that area to investigate. There we encountered the fin whale Dingle, a whale we see in the area often. We actually saw Dingle earlier in the season, but hadn't encountered it in quite a few weeks. In general, fin whales move between various feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine all through the summer. It is possible Dingle made the rounds to some other areas while we weren't seeing it, and now has returned to look for food here.

Humpback whales have two blowholes connected to their lungs. These are just like our two nostrils, except whales' noses are on the top of the head!

We saw some splashing out in the distance while we were watching Dingle, and tried to track down what was making all the commotion. We were pleasantly surprised to find two more whales, Comet and Fjord. These fin whales were moving quite fast through the water showing off their great speed and streamlined bodies.

This humpback whale raises its tail to get an extra push under the water for a deeper dive.

We were able to get some great looks at Fjord and Comet as they plied through the waves, sometimes bringing quite a bit of their body above the surface as they pumped their powerful tails. We also saw Comet earlier in the year, and when this whale dived we often saw a lot of its tail stock and occasionally the tail just under or just above the water. This isn't very typical of fin whales which don't usually raise their tails above the water, since they are negatively buoyant and don't need much of a push to sink underneath the waves.

This fin whale is moving fast.

When we saw Comet today she was arching her back steeply as earlier, but since she was swimming so fast, the effect was quite dramatic. We got excellent looks at Comet pumping her tail hard to push all the weight through the water. The largest fin whales can weigh as much as 80 tons, and Comet appears to be a very large fin whale. This is a lot of body to push through the water!

You can see some old scarring on this fin whale. Like the humpback above, these wounds seem to have healed, but again they are most likely the result of an interaction with human activity.

Today was quite a successful Sunday whale watch. We saw three species of baleen whales all engaged in a variety of activities. It was a great cross section of the range of behaviors exhibited by some of the animals. We were treated to some amazing looks at extremely calm humpback whales, minke whales swimming in all directions probably looking for some food, and some very active fin whales, using their great speed.

This fin whale throws up quite a bit of water with its tail as it goes under the water for a slightly deeper dive at a good clip.