July 17-19, 2023

Monday morning was a humbling morning. Marine life was plentiful - our first ocean sunfish of the season(!), numerous humpback whales, a grey seal and even a pod of Atlantic white-sided dolphins.

First sunfish of the season!

Grey seal

Atlantic white-sided dolphin

However, the trip provided its own spin on the reality of whales... entanglements. One of our whales was entangled. Anytime an entangled whale is sighted our mindsets and reactions are shifted into high gear. It's a flurry of activity with LOTS of photos being taken, phone calls being made, data recorded being fine-tuned, and radio calls being made to other vessels, to mention a few "behind the scenes" activities. It's organized chaos all the while a wild animal could be dealing with a potentially lethal event. The entire whale-watching community is always working together to keep these wild animals as safe as possible. So thank you to our passengers on both our trips Monday for your patience, understanding, and concern. To the captain, naturalist, and crew on the Hurricane II who stood by and made numerous phone calls about the sighting. And of course to the responders, who beat feet up from Provincetown, MA (on the water) to assist this whale in distress, the Marine Animal Entanglement Response team. These brave and selfless crew were able to relocate the whale, assess the entanglement, track its movements and attempt to remove some of the gear. The next sighting of this whale will be extremely important to determine if any gear still remains on the whale.

On our afternoon trip, we kept a keen eye out for the entangled whale but did not find it. Instead, we came across five humpback whales - Patches, Spoon, Chromosome, Pinball and her 2023 calf.

Patches

Pinball and her calf

Pair of humpback whales

A minke whale even surfaced briefly. Monday may have been a mentally exhausting day, but it's what all of us who work in this industry must anticipate, and will do everything possible to help these creatures.

On Tuesday morning, Mother Nature had her own plans for us. The fog rolled in where we have been seeing whales on Jeffreys Ledge. We searched all over the area, but unfortunately, we could not find any whales. It wasn't until we were on our way home we came across a minke whale.

Minke whale

Tuesday afternoon, our first sighting was a pod of ~75 Atlantic white-sided dolphins. Dolphins aren't a regular sighting for us so it was a pleasant surprise.

Atlantic white-sided dolphins

Back out on Jeffreys Ledge (where we searched and searched that morning), visibility had much improved and we spent time with six humpback whales including Pinball and her calf, Pitcher and Valley and her calf.

On Wednesday morning, there was quite a variety of marine life. The trip began with Finke the minke whale. We've been seeing this whale since 2011!

Finke!

We were then lucky to come across a nursery pod of ~40 Atlantic white-sided dolphins.

Baby dolphins (above and below)!!!

Before getting to Jeffreys Ledge we came across a humpback whale. It was Nike and this whale was busy eating. Lots of eating!

Nike lunge-feeding (above and below)

The trip rounded out with a quick look at an ocean sunfish.

Ocean sunfish poking out

On Wednesday afternoon, we were able to spend time with Nike once again. Still, this whale was eating with lots of lunge-feeding behavior. While this whale was sporadically surfacing in the area, when it did surface, it certainly was impressive!