June 29-30, 2022

 Wednesday, June 29, 2022

This morning, we steamed north toward the area we had whales yesterday afternoon. We passed by a few harbor porpoises on the way before finding a minke whale. This “little” 25-foot whale surfaced frequently and was easy to see on the glassy calm seas.

 

Continuing on, we saw a large, yellow balloon floating on the ocean. Marine debris (trash in the ocean) is a huge problem for marine life. Our crew was amazing once again, plucking this inflated piece of plastic out of the ocean.

Next, we spotted a humpback whale that appeared to be on the smaller side- possibly a juvenile. As we waited for it to resurface, we saw a small mark on our depth sounder, telling us that something was right below the boat. Sometimes these marks are tuna or schools of fish, and sometimes they are whales! I looked down into the water, hoping to see the glow of a humpback whale’s white flippers, but what I saw instead was a huge surprise. A 6-foot porbeagle shark was right next to the boat, and with those glassy calm seas, we could see the entire animal as if we were in an aquarium! Awesome! But then it got even better! The shark swam circles around the boat, rubbing up on the hull! Upon closer inspection, this shark had several lamprey eels attached, so we believe it was trying to knock off the parasitic fish. In over 25 years of whale watching, I’ve never seen anything like this! In the meantime, the humpback whale came back up but we decided to stay with the shark for as long as it would stay with us. After a long 6 minutes of shark-watching, our fishy friend left us, and we were back to whale-watching!

The small-ish humpback whale was tricky to find since it didn’t have a visible blow and was very stealthy at the surface. Eventually, the whale became more predictable and showed up close by. We finally saw its flukes and realized that we saw this same whale last Friday afternoon. We still don’t know who it is, so possibly a new whale for our catalog!

 

The afternoon trip was completely different from the morning. The wind picked up, so we lost the glassy seas. However, found three whales: one minke and two humpbacks! And better yet, the humpbacks were two of Blue Ocean Society's adoptable whales again!! Cool! The first was Pinball. She was moving around quite a bit but generally sticking around the area.

We moved on to check out other areas. In our travels, we found more balloons. This cluster was from a graduation party. Ugh. Please do not let balloons go!

 

After a bit of searching, we found Satula! This humpback was feeding on fish near the bottom and blowing clouds of bubbles to corral his meal! At one point, he surprised us by coming up right next to our bow after being underwater for about 5 minutes! Whales always keep us on our toes!

Thursday, June 30, 2022

This morning greeted us with beautiful sea conditions and bright sunlight. It took a bit of searching, but eventually, we found Satula, the humpback whale. Satula was all over the place, always showing up in a different direction between dives. There was plenty of bait in the water, and Satula was busy feeding. He even created a bubble cloud at one point. He eventually gave passengers some great looks. While we were watching Satula, a fin whale also popped up nearby. We were able to get some quick looks at the second largest whale in the world. Eventually, Satula was joined by a second humpback whale, Pinball! Pinball and Satula are adoptable whales with the Blue Ocean Society, and it’s always nice to see them.

Pinball diving

Satula diving

The beautiful sea conditions continued in the afternoon, and the wind died a little. We got some quick peaks at a minke whale before finding an ocean sunfish. After leaving the sunfish, we had to search and search before finding another minke whale. We got some lovely views of this whale before it was time to head back to Rye Harbor.

Ocean sunfish