Friday September 20

It was a picture perfect day: calm seas, sunny skies and plenty of whales around to watch. 4 Fin whales, 5 Humpback whales, 8 Minke whales and a handful of Harbor seals and a Gray seal rounded out the plethora of life offshore today.

Fin whale swimming through the flat calm ocean

Everyone was out on such a beautiful day. Fin whale going on a deeper dive while a fishing boat hauls up its gear

Many of the whales we saw were either slowly moving through the area or just circling around allowing for some quality time spent with so many species. 

Such a distinctive dorsal fin on this Minke whale (so distinctive we know we've seen this whale multiple times this year!)

First Fin whale of the day (above and below) showing us so much of its enormous body!

Some whales were so relaxed they were actually napping at the surface just hovering along on the water's edge. This was the case with most of the Humpback whales we spent time with. Our first Humpback whale was a new sighting for us this season. Trowel is once again in our neck of the ocean.

Trowel above and below

We saw this whale last year but have yet to have any sightings of this animal this year so it was a nice surprise to find Trowel moving through the area. We even got a chance to spend a little bit of time with Patches before ending our trip with a trio of napping whales.

Humpback whales slowly gliding past us

Valley, her calf, and Cacophony were not only still moving around the ocean together (we saw this same trio yesterday!) they were all resting. 

Trio of Humpback whales resting at the surface

With such minimal movements we could just sit there with our engines shut off giving us some incredible looks at the "small" calf and two adult whales. 

Valley and her calf (Valley has the rounded/almost lack of dorsal fin on her back)

Valley

Cacophony

All in all a wonderful day out on the water gazing at some incredible creatures.

Valley's calf waking up to poke its nose above the water

Thursday, September 19th 2013

This humpback whale is probably going on a deeper dive, raising its tail flukes high out of the water.

 

 We had an action packed day, including a bunch of firsts for our season. We started off the day with some good looks at some fin whales not far past the Isles of Shoals. While we were watching these animals we started to see some other blows just a little bit in the distance. This is often the case, as when we slow down in an area that has whales, we have a better chance to take a really good look around. Sometimes whales might be on a deeper dive as we travel through an area and so they can be easy to miss. If only we had enough time and patience to cruise the whole ocean slowly, imagine what we could find!

This fin whale is also going on a deeper dive, but it doesn't need to raise its tail to slip beneath the waves.

 

This fin whale is just coming up to the surface, traveling away from the camera. You can see its blowholes wide open as it finishing exhaling and starts inhaling in preparation for another submergence.

When we checked out the other whales in the area, we found that they were three humpbacks spending a lot of time just floating at the surface. It soon became clear that these were different animals than we have been seeing in the past week. Humpback whales are identified mainly by the patterns of black and white on the underside of their tail. As you can see in some of the pictures below, the dorsal fins of humpback whales also vary a lot and can be helpful in telling individuals apart. One of these whales we recognized right away because of its distinctive dorsal fin and flukes, as Valley. It also looks like Valley was traveling with a calf. Female humpback whales will give birth in the winter, but will nurse and swim next to their young for an entire year after birth, until the young whale is big enough and knowledgeable enough to find food on its own.

Looks like all these gulls were hoping this fishing boat pulls up a lot of fish in that net. Humans and whales often fish for the same species.

One of our trio of humpback whales fluking.

 Besides traveling with a calf for about a year, humpback whales using swim alone. So it was a special treat to see three whales together. The other whale appears to be one named Cacophony. Cacophony means a clanging mishmash of sounds, perhaps whoever named it was inspired by the trangle of lines and marks that can be seen on the back of its tail. We're not sure if Cacophony is male or female. It is pretty much impossible to tell if whales are male or female from looking at their back, but since we've seen Valley with several calves over the years and calves only travel with their mothers, we assume Valley is a female.

At this angle it looks like the mother humpback whales tail alone is bigger than her entire calf! The perspective is playing some tricks here, but a large humpback whale might have 15 foot flukes. When calves are born they are somewhere around 20 feet, but they grow quickly...

You can see how all three of these whales have very different dorsal fins. This is one of the ways we can tell them apart.

This humpback has a huge dorsal fin, it almost looks like a fin whale.

Calves sometimes have more powdery, indistinct colors on the underside of their tail. Within a couple of years the pattern seems to stabilize and will stay pretty consistent through the rest of the animal's life.

All these sightings would've made a great whale watch, but there was still more to come! Thanks to some helpful calls from some fishermen and other whale watching boats, we were able to get pointed in the right direction to see some rarer activity. Apparently there were quite a few pilot whales in the area. There are actually two species of pilot whales, long-finned and short-finned. It is pretty impossible to tell these two species apart just by looking at them from a boat, and in our area the two species' ranges overlap.

Here is a whole mess of pilot whales coming to the surface at once. Do you see the huge dorsal fin on the whale in the foreground.

Pilot whale face.

Pilot whales are really fun to watch, as they spend a lot of time at the surface, apparently socializing. There were several groups in the area, sometimes called pods, and they had a variety of animals from very small young ones to very large adults. Some of the calves were rolling around at the surface on top of their mothers. Some of the other whales we could hear making little clicking and other popping sounds at the surface.

Rainblow.

Apparently this pilot whale was wondering what was happening above the water.

Pilot whales are thought to be very intelligent. In fact they are part of the same family as dolphins, a group which has some of the biggest brains in proportion to its body size in all the mammals. The other big brained mammals include the primates (the group we belong to along with the great apes), and elephants. Scientists think that perhaps dolphins evolved big brains to keep track of the complicated social politics that come up when you live in a big group and depend on the group for your livelihood. This is also one of the leading theories for why primates evolved big brains. Once a species has a big brain, it is probably useful for all sorts of other things and so it tends to get bigger rather than smaller.

Lots of whales at the surface.

We don't see pilot whales very often. Most of the time we think they are farther offshore, probably in search of some of their favorite food, squid. These whales can dive really deep in search of squid, which they suck into their mouths whole! Sometimes they wander in closer to show and we get a chance to see them. Some researchers in Spain have been working hard to photo id pilot whales (just like we identify humpbacks) and learn more about them. In addition, they have been tagging these animals to track their underwater movements and learn more about how they hunt. You can read about this and see some great pictures at their blog.

Finally, we noticed a whale resting at the surface on our way back towards Rye. It looked like Patches again (we saw this whale yesterday as well). Their was still mud on Patches' nose. So either it isn't clean yet, or it has been doing some more feeding on the bottom. Looked like Patches just wanted to rest when we saw it though, and we soon left it alone to continue with that while we headed back to the harbor.

You can see the blow from this whale just behind it. On such a calm day, it takes a long time for blows to blow away.

Going for a dive.

Wednesday, September 18 2013

A perfect fall day! Beautiful calm weather, clear skies, not too cold, and plenty of whales to look at. We started off the day just off a shallow underwater ledge. There we saw a familiar fin whale which was taking some long dives perhaps looking for some of the fish we could see on the depth finder right at the bottom. We were in just over 300 feet of water at the time. While we were watching the fin whale we saw another whale in the distance and as we moved closer we got a chance to see one of our favorite humpback whales, Patches! Patches is actually the whale pictured on the Granite State brochure, so we're all big fans of his.

This whale has a muddy nose!

It's funny though, even Patches didn't look himself today. The underside of humpback whale tails are useful in identifying individuals, but when we saw Patches tail for the first time today it was backlit so it was a little hard to see (you can see the picture below). It first it looked like Patches, and then it definitely didn't because there was a big black mark on the left side that we hadn't noticed before.

In this picture you can see the splotch on the left side of Patches fluke is just mud and is starting to wash away.

Looking at patches head, though we saw it was covered in mud. We also had seen fish right on the bottom nearby with the fin whale, so we guessed that both these whales might have been feeding right on the bottom of the ocean. Sometimes humpback whales come back up from the depths with scuffing on their noses or if the bottom is soft they bring back some mud with them. This gave us the idea that maybe the black spot on the left fluke was actually just some mud that had gotten onto the tail. In fact, that's what it was! Next time we saw Patches' tail we could see that some of the mud had already washed off.

This fin whale is so long the dorsal fin doesn't come to the surface each time it comes up for breath. here you are just seeing the first half or so of the body. The cloud is the whales blow slowly dissipating in the wind.

It is fun to imagine what kind of underwater acrobatics Patches must have been doing to get mud on his tail of all places. In fact, scientists have been able to track individual whales on their paths underwater using sophisticated tags attached with suction cups. A computer program designed by Colin Ware, a researcher at UNH, can show the 3D path of the tagged whales underwater. This is one way we've gotten a peak into how these whales feed under the water where we can't watch them, and how they end up with mud of their faces (and apparently tails).

A big fin whale getting ready for a dive.

Our other big surprise today was some great looks at atlantic white sided dolphins. We encountered a pod of 30 or so animals not far from the fin whale and Patches. These animals were active and included a full compliment of baby dolphins all the way up to some very large adults. The biggest white sided dolphins can get up to 9 feet.

Here's the first picture I got a Patches' tail. I was very confused by that black spot on the left. It turned out just to be mud.

Patches is thought to be a male humpback whale. It is the male humpbacks that are famous for their elaborate songs. Some of our passengers we asking where they could hear some examples of whale songs, so here is a youtube clip I found with some interesting sounds. If you want to read a little bit more about whale acoustics, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology doesn't just listen to birds...

Some dolphins surfacing. See the little one on the left?

All in all, it was a great trip. We even got some good looks at harbor porpoise, which tend to be pretty shy around boats. We had a brief look at a minke whale in the area as well, meaning we saw 3 different species of baleen whales and 2 difference species of tooth whales. What a great day out on the water.

Sunday, September 15 2013

Excellent weather today, with flat seas and clear skies. We were able to find a great variety of whales as well. We saw about a half dozen minke whales, several groups of harbor porpoise, three fin whales, and two humpback whales. The humpbacks were identified as the whales Piña and Victim. The fin whales we saw are called Dingle, Fjord, and Comet.

This minke whale is swimming past some fishing gear and fishing boats. The search for food sometimes put humans and whales in the exact same location.

We started the day with a minke whale and some harbor porpoise, quite a bit inshore of where we usually see whales. If we see a whale very far inshore, it tends to be a minke whale. These smaller whales seem to be found sometimes in shallower water near shore. The minke whale is one of two species of baleen whales which aren't considered endangered in the U.S, but they are still always a treat to find on a whale watch.

Piña and Victim may have been doing some resting today, spending a lot of time at the surface moving very very slowly or not at all at times.

Once we traveled a little further out we were able to spot a couple of humpback whales which appeared to be doing some resting in the area. Whales find time to get some rest out on the water, and humpback whales sometimes float at the surface to take a break. Unlike toothed whales which sometimes live in family groups, Baleen whales don't live in groups and spend most of their time alone. Sometimes they join together to feed or, as we can see here with Piña and Victim, to take a little rests. These groups tend not to last long, from just a few minutes up to a couple of hours or days.

This humpback whale has some damage to its tail flukes. Despite the chunk missing from the flukes, this whale doesn't appear to have difficulty moving around or feeding. Many humpback whales in the Gulf of Maine show signs of injury inflicted by human activity (boat strikes and entanglements in fishing gear are the most common).

While we were watching the humpbacks we noticed a spot in the distance and moved over to that area to investigate. There we encountered the fin whale Dingle, a whale we see in the area often. We actually saw Dingle earlier in the season, but hadn't encountered it in quite a few weeks. In general, fin whales move between various feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine all through the summer. It is possible Dingle made the rounds to some other areas while we weren't seeing it, and now has returned to look for food here.

Humpback whales have two blowholes connected to their lungs. These are just like our two nostrils, except whales' noses are on the top of the head!

We saw some splashing out in the distance while we were watching Dingle, and tried to track down what was making all the commotion. We were pleasantly surprised to find two more whales, Comet and Fjord. These fin whales were moving quite fast through the water showing off their great speed and streamlined bodies.

This humpback whale raises its tail to get an extra push under the water for a deeper dive.

We were able to get some great looks at Fjord and Comet as they plied through the waves, sometimes bringing quite a bit of their body above the surface as they pumped their powerful tails. We also saw Comet earlier in the year, and when this whale dived we often saw a lot of its tail stock and occasionally the tail just under or just above the water. This isn't very typical of fin whales which don't usually raise their tails above the water, since they are negatively buoyant and don't need much of a push to sink underneath the waves.

This fin whale is moving fast.

When we saw Comet today she was arching her back steeply as earlier, but since she was swimming so fast, the effect was quite dramatic. We got excellent looks at Comet pumping her tail hard to push all the weight through the water. The largest fin whales can weigh as much as 80 tons, and Comet appears to be a very large fin whale. This is a lot of body to push through the water!

You can see some old scarring on this fin whale. Like the humpback above, these wounds seem to have healed, but again they are most likely the result of an interaction with human activity.

Today was quite a successful Sunday whale watch. We saw three species of baleen whales all engaged in a variety of activities. It was a great cross section of the range of behaviors exhibited by some of the animals. We were treated to some amazing looks at extremely calm humpback whales, minke whales swimming in all directions probably looking for some food, and some very active fin whales, using their great speed.

This fin whale throws up quite a bit of water with its tail as it goes under the water for a slightly deeper dive at a good clip.

Saturday September 14

It was another day full of life on Jeffreys Ledge today. While we did encounter a good swell as we ventured offshore we also had almost no wind to speak of and great visibility for miles all around us. We had great conditions for whale spotting and spot whales we did! We first made our way to some splashing in the distance. It was a group of Atlantic white-sided dolphins. We eased our way into the area only to suddenly see one, wait, two large bodies emerge from the depths of the ocean. Two Humpback whales were right in the middle of the dolphins! 

A 6-8ft Atlantic white-sided dolphin swims next to a 40-50ft Humpback whale

Humpback whales and dolphins on the move

To make things even more fun it was our familiar pair of Humpback whales side by side again today. Patches and Victim were still in the area! 

Patches



Victim

What an incredible treat to see two large Humpback whales surrounded by a group of smaller toothed-whales. 

Patches off on a deeper dive while a few Atlantic white-sided dolphins swim close by

Dolphins catching up to Victim at the surface

The Humpback whales themselves were once again being extremely mellow, napping for most of the time we spent watching them today. 

Another nice day seeing Patches and Victim in our area

Dolphins would dart all around Patches and Victim which would remain quite stationary on the water's edge, a very good indication the pair was getting some rest. Out of the blue Patches rolled on its side a few times bringing one of its large white flippers into the air. 

Patches on its side with flipper high in the air as Victim swims at the surface

At one point Patches even rolled completely on its back with both flippers above the waterline and we literally watched Patches' flipper land on top of Victim's back! The whales were so close that when Patches' went to flop its flipper down the only place it could go was on to Victim! Apparently Victim wasn't too concerned for from our vantage point this whale barely did anything different than remain napping on the surface. Not quite the reaction you might expect when a 1-ton flipper lands on you! 

Patches "belly up" with its flippers in the air

These whales are so close to each other! (Patches flipper and Victim's back)

With some great looks at these relaxed whales which a few times slowly swam towards, under, and next to the boat(!), we eased our way out of the area and ventured on. 

The view through the pilothouse window as our pair swims literally just in front of the boat! (The engines had been shut off for some time before this so no worries!)

The trip wasn't over for we also got a quick look at a few Minke whales before seeing a Fin whale! While two Fin whales were in the area we ended up spending time with one circling around. 

Fin whale spout

To our amazement it was a very familiar whale. Comet had returned back to Jeffreys Ledge! We last saw this whale on July 27.

The part of a Fin whale usually not seen at the surface. The majority of Comet's tailstock and even part of its tail is visible above the ocean's surface!

It has been well over a month since last seeing this whale in the area so we were thrilled to see this whale again this season! What a great way to end our already enjoyable day out with wildlife.