Wednesday was another lovely day on the ocean with some of the calmest seas we have seen all season. The glassy water led to us finding an ocean sunfish, followed by three blue sharks finning at the surface. The first shark was actually rubbing up on a branch! Although I had never seen this behavior from a blue shark before, we learned from Capt. Jonathan that blue sharks get the nickname “blue dogs” because of their affection for sticks!
A bit later, we found a pod of Atlantic white-sided dolphins as well as a fin whale that was taking long dives.
We spotted a humpback whale in the area so we moved closer to that whale and got a couple of looks at this whale’s magnificent tail as it dove. The whale wasn’t one of our regulars, but we were able to eventually identify it as Decimal, a whale we have seen in prior years, but this was our first sighting of it this year.
Then, in the distance, we saw some more blows. There, we found a pair of fin whales swimming slowly at the surface, and one even “logged” at the surface for a bit! Slow-moving, floating fin whales are rare to see as they are usually very fast and stealthy!
We saw a couple more fin whales with some Atlantic white-sided dolphins before heading for home.
On our way home, we saw a lot of splashing in the distance.
This turned out to be a huge pod of maybe 200 Atlantic white-sided dolphins who
were very active! Some were leaping 10-20 feet out of the water, others were tail-slapping, and then a pair of dolphins jumped out right next to the bow! Incredible!
Maybe they were practicing for the next summer Olympics in the sport of
synchronized jumping!
I can’t wait to see what the weekend brings!
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