Slight change in events over the last few days, more whales have been traveling through and staying around Stellwagen Bank. There was more bait in the area then recently so the activity feeding wise flourished as well. We've had a bit more of everything, more finbacks, more humpbacks, more minkes, hopefully they will stay around.
Rocker has returned along with a bunch more whales that were not around recently. Over the course of this trip we saw: Nile, Rocker, Venom, Pitcher, Putter, Lariat, Northstar, Strike, Soot, Stub, Spoon and calf, and possibly Cardhu and calf.
We saw some great feeding behaviors and had amazing looks at the whales and enjoyed every second with them because we never know how long it will last.
Here is Soot, one of our humpbacks that came into the area and was amongst the dozens that were passing through.
More feeding frenzy whales showing us bubble net feeding and straining at the surface. It was a great day to be offshore with all the whales. Hopefully there is more to come.
2 pm Trip - Leah
We started off our trip this afternoon with some finback whales and this one in particular caught my eye because of the mottled pattern on its back. At first I thought it must have rested at the surface to long and got a sunburn but luckily whales in the wild don't spend as much time at the surface compared to whales in captivity. This mottled pattern should be natural markings either sloughing of skin or just some scuffing.
A sudden breach from a whale in a larger group, right in front of a whale traveling along. This whale even has darker flippers than the rest. Most of our whales have very white flippers but a few have more black than usual.
This is a humpback named Dracula, you can see the fangs on the left side of the whales fluke. This is the first year that I think I've ever seen this whale. It's always nice to meet new friends.
More lunge feeding from the humpback whales and below is a sequence of a humpback named Fulcrum doing a complete behavior from start to finish of kick feeding. We miss out on the acivity that happens under the water like the blowing of the bubbles but the surface behavior is amazing.
That was kick number one, sometimes depending on the whale the kicks either happen once or a few times, up to three kicks on average per kick feed sequence.
That was the second kick, Fulcrum then went on a quick dive circling back to engulf the stunned fish that were trapped inside the bubble net at the surface of the water. The bubble cloud below shows Fulcrum starting to surface slowly mouth wide open right in the middle of the mess of bubbles and squirming fish.
Here's a shot of the baleen that helps the whales strain there food out of the water and trap all the fish they engulf inside. This was a neat shot to catch but I would not want to be right in front of that mouth coming at me.
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