Thursday morning started off just the way we like it, flat and calm! Days like these give us excellent spotting conditions for animals we might not get the chance to see if there's big swells and chop at the surface. Sure enough, these conditions gave way to us finding our first animal of the day, an ocean sunfish!
Ocean Sunfish
After continuing along, we had to press our search a little further than we had travelled the day prior, but it eventually paid off as we approached an area with a few humpback whales! Our first humpback of the day came in the form of Clamp!
Clamp diving
Clamp was definitely doing a whole lot of feeding underneath the surface as she wasted no time continuously circling around us before diving again and again to forage. We decided to leave Clamp to her breakfast and continue on towards the other whales in the area. The second whale in the area we spent time with was a whale named Sedge, before moving on to our final sighting of the trip, Pinball!
Sedge's (lack of) dorsal fin
Thursday afternoon began with a bit of a breeze up as we started our way back out towards where we had found luck with whales in the morning, little did we know we were in for a treat! Our afternoon sightings began similarly as we spent time watching Sedge the humpback whale do some feeding just underneath the surface.
Sedge diving
It didn't take long for us to start seeing other whales off in the distance. After saying bye to Sedge, we made our way over to a group of three humpback whales resting near the surface, all the while, seeing more whales off in the distance. Our trio turned out to be Valley, Fan, and Alligator.
Humpbacks surfacing and diving (above and below)
As we spent time with our trio, we were joined very briefly by yet another humpback, Chromosome. As we sat idle knowing there were several whales in the area, we were looking at a minke whale passing by when all of the sudden a loud exhale erupted just off our portside. One humpback surfaced just next to us, which I had assumed was Sedge. That was until this whale raised its tail and revealed itself to be Satula! Both Sedge and Satula are missing their dorsal fins, an injury type we don't see on too many whales, so it's always interesting to have them both on the same trip! After waiting some time for our whales to move a bit further from our boat, we continued on just a bit further to investigate a couple more whale close by. These last two whales turned out to be Pinball and Clamp.
Pinball diving
As we spent time with these two, there were several more whales we could see further off in the distance, but unfortunately there was just no time left in the trip to head further offshore. Not making it out to whales because you're so caught up in watching whales is a great problem to have!
Rain and wind kept us on land Friday morning, but conditions eased up enough for us to venture out towards the ledge in the afternoon! After making our way offshore, we started our trip with a pair of humpback whales, Valley and Fan.
Pair of humpbacks at surface
Fan diving
As we were getting incredible looks at this pair, we could see the spouts of other whales off in the distance, so we said goodbye to our whales and moved off to investigate. The first one we happened upon was Satula. We spent just a few minutes with him before we continued along towards our final humpback of the trip, Clamp!
Satula diving
Eventually, it was time to start the journey back towards home. On our way in, we got distant looks at a passing fin whale. A while after that, we were lucky to get a quick glimpse at a minke whale that decided to breach twice not far off to our left! We really never know what we are going to get when we leave the harbor!
Distant fin whale
No comments:
Post a Comment