Thursday afternoon began with a very noticeable deterioration in sea state as well as an uptick in precipitation as we made our way offshore. We got quick looks at a few small groups of harbor porpoise as we continued out, eventually coming across a single fin whale.
Fin whale exhaling
Fin whale diving
We were able to spend a bit of time with this whale before heavy rain forced us to depart the area. We did our best to search for more life, but weren't able to happen across anything else before making our turn back towards Rye. Unfortunately, fair weather isn't a guarantee when we go out whale watching so conditions aren't always the most productive for our purposes, but that doesn't stop us from trying our best!
Friday morning began with a lot of searching. After a long journey offshore, we happened across a minke whale, but were unable to get more than one look at it, before pressing on and getting to spend time with a small nursery pod of Atlantic white-sided dolphins.
Dolphin exhaling subsurface
After spending time with our dolphins, we continued along until we came into an area with two fin whales, both animals swimming independently of one another, but not spending too much time beneath the surface, giving us excellent looks before we started our journey back towards the harbor.
Fin whale diving
Friday afternoon began with us headed back out towards were we had our two fin whales in the morning. Once there, we were able to spend time with one fin whale, this whale coming to the surface and circling around, very likely chasing down schools of fish.
Fin whale
As we followed this whale, it came up to the surface, changing its species entirely! Our fin whale had turned into a humpback whale (not really). A juvenile humpback had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, so we switched our attention and began traveling with this whale for a short period of time. This humpback unfortunately displayed much scarring around its tailstock from a very recent entanglement in fishing gear. Many of the large whales that we encounter along Jeffrey's ledge do bear scars from prior injuries resulting from human-related causes such as vessel strikes and fishing gear. We were able to document this animals injuries and send them to local authority for review.
Humpback whale diving
Humpback whale fluke
Right before we began our journey back towards home, we slowly made our way back through the area where our whale watch picked up, and were able to see at least three different fin whale surface nearby before we picked up speed and made our way back towards Rye Harbor.
Distant fin whale
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