What a perfect day! The seas were calm (finally!), the sun
was shining, and the whales were plentiful!
We passed by some harbor porpoises on our way out towards
Jeffreys Ledge. Before we knew it, we were seeing spouts of large whales in the
distance. The first pair of humpbacks
whales we spotted were Pinball and Blackhole! Pinball is a regular favorite,
and Blackhole has only been seen a couple of times this year. Blackhole greeted us by slowly slapping her
huge dark flipper on the surface. We aren’t sure what this behavior means but
the pair didn’t seem concerned by our presence at all. It is also interesting
to note that Blackhole’s flippers are almost all black on the top side. Most
humpback whales in the Atlantic Ocean have all-white flippers. The Pacific
humpbacks are knows to have flippers resembling Blackhole’s though.
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Blackhole |
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Blackhole's dark flipper |
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Pinball showing her muddy nose- evidence of feeding on the bottom! |
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Pinball |
Next we found another pair of humpback whales identified as
Quote and Buzzard. Quote is seen in the area sporadically but Buzzard is a
pretty new visitor, only being seen here once before in 2012! We also spotted a minke whale near this pair.
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Buzzard and Quote |
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Quote |
As we kept looking around, we kept seeing more spouts! Today’s
calm conditions and clear skies certainly helped us to find whales! Soon we found another pair of humpback
whales, Owl and Jabiru! Owl is another old favorite, being seen here nearly
every year, and Jabiru is quickly becoming a regular!
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Owl |
A fin whale passed by in the distance and
suddenly we saw that Quote and Buzzard had joined the pair, at least for a moment.
Mystery still surrounds the social behaviors of whales so we aren’t quite sure
what happened beneath the waves but soon Owl, Quote and Buzzard took off in one
direction, while Jabiru headed off on her own.
We were running a bit short on time but found yet another
pair of humpbacks close by. These two were sleeping when we arrived so we cut
our engines and just drifted with these two for nearly 20 minutes. It was so
calm and peaceful, watching over 2 sleepy humpback whales! Finally these whales
woke up and showed us there identities (flukes) and I was over-the-moon excited
to see that one was my all-time favorite whale named Spoon! Spoon was the first
whale I adopted as a kid and has a reputation of being really big and slow, and
we love her for that! She was first seen
in 1977 but we don’t know how old she is since she wasn’t a calf back then. She
is likely one of the oldest whales in the Gulf of Maine!
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Sleepy Spoon near the boat |
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Spoon is huge! |
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Spoon- I love that fluke! |
The whale with Spoon was a male named Chromosome- any ideas how he got his name??
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Chromosome |
As we searched around, we saw a hazard to marine life- a
balloon! We see lots of trash on the ocean and whenever we can, we pick it up
to make the oceans just a little bit cleaner and safer our whales. The balloon
picked up by our crew could have been injested by one of our whales, or a
turtle, seal, shark, codfish, etc. Marine debris is a huge issue world-wide and
we are always happy to do our part and recover some of these items whenever we
can.
Another minke whale was spotted in the area and as we headed
home we passed more harbor porpoises, a blue shark, a second fin whale and even
stopped to get a quick look at a finless minke whale- one that we have been
seeing here for the past 4 years! Such
an incredible day! We are always surprised and inspired by each trip’s
sightings as we truly never know what we will find each and every day. And on a personal note, today was my birthday
and I can think of no better way to ring in a new decade by spending it on the
ocean surrounded by whales, many of which I have been watching for 20 years!