Monday morning began with a school field trip out towards Jeffreys Ledge! After making our way offshore, first getting to spend time with Clamp the humpback whale, who was very busy feeding each time she came up to the surface, often times filtering out saltwater in between her baleen plates.
Clamp Diving
Clamp filtering out saltwater
We left Clamp to continue her morning feeding as we saw another whale out in the distance. This turned out to be Pinball the humpback! Pinball has certainly been a regular so far for us this season, so always good to see that she's still spending time in the area.
Pinball diving
We were beginning to run short on time, so we started to work our way back towards Rye Harbor. Our journey home was cut short as we came across a particularly active humpback whale! This whale, on its side, repeatedly raising and smacking its large flippers against the surface of the ocean.
Humpback whale flipper
Always a fun way to end a whale watch, and definitely a great way for our kids on board to finish their school year! We crossed our fingers that the afternoon would be just as exciting!
Monday afternoon began with us headed back out towards where we had found our success in during the morning whale watch. Much like the morning trip, we started off by spending time with the humpback whale, Clamp. This whale is known for, occasionally, being a little "extra" when she goes down on a deeper dive. It goes a little something like this...
Clamp demonstrating her fancy dive
This interesting form of diving wasn't the only interesting behaviors we saw from Clamp, as at one point, she launched the back half of her body above the surface with a tail breach! After time well spent with Clamp, we continued further along until happening across another friend from our morning trip, Pinball.
Pinball diving
We stayed for just a few surfacing's as we were running short on time, before ultimately making our way back towards home.
Tuesday morning began with another field trip! We were making our way back out towards where we had luck finding whales the day before, when one of our interns spotted a blow a little ways behind us. We were initially perplexed as to how we could've passed this whale by, but it quickly became apparent that this whale was being very elusive, only coming up to breathe once every few minutes as it traveled south. We followed this humpback whale for a ways before finally getting to see it go down for a deeper dive.
Humpback whale
Humpback diving
We left this whale to continue on with its day as we pressed further offshore, eventually coming across another humpback whale.
Humpback whale, Sigma, diving
This whale was also being fairly elusive, but was very evidently doing some hunting beneath the surface as we watched it quickly moving to chase down prey. We spent what time we had left watching this whale, before returning back home for our afternoon trip.
Tuesday afternoon began with us actually not having to travel as far offshore as we have been in recent trips. There were a number of whales in the area, most of which were humpback whales. We first briefly spent time with Chromosome and a whale that never raised its tail. I have a sneaking suspicion who it was and am hoping to see more of them in the coming days. While waiting for these whales to resurface, also seeing a fin whale off in the distance!
Chromosome diving
Distant fin whale
Our fin whale sightings are definitely more sparse than they were last year at this time, so always an exciting find for us offshore! We witnessed this fin whale lunge at prey out in the distance, so we moved to investigate. However, we got stopped short by a pair of humpback whales that surfaced nearby, Whirlwind and Grand Manan.
Grand Manan diving
These two humpback whales were only associated with one another for a short time before ultimately splitting off and heading their own ways. As we were following them, they led us to our fifth humpback of the trip, Clamp! We decided to finish off our trip with Clamp as she was doing some feeding near the surface, evident by all of the bubble clouds rising up to the surface not far behind her. A lovely way to wrap up our Tuesday!
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