9 am trip - Tammy
Cool temperatures and a northeast breeze made it feel a little like fall this morning! We traveled to the east side of Stellwagen Bank where the whales were plentiful. We got to see 8-10 humpback whales on today's trip. A pair of humpbacks named Mostaza and Komodo were resting together and another humpback named Brine was traveling solo.
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| humpback whale off the bow |
Two other baleen whale species were sighted this morning. We spotted quite a few minke whales, the smallest of the baleen whales in the Gulf of Maine. We also had a brief sighting of a finback whale, the second largest whale in the world.
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| minke whale |
Activity picked up a bit just before our time was up. A group of four humpbacks got together to feed using bubble clouds. In this group was an unidentified mother-calf pair. The mother humpback was doing a really neat behavior called snaking, where the head and tail of the whale are visible. This probably helps the whale strain the water out of it's mouth after feeding. Great morning offshore!
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| group of feeding humpbacks |
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| humpback whale lunging |
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| humpback whale snaking with flippers out |
2 pm trip - Tammy
Stellwagen Bank was a much different place this afternoon, with calmer seas, fewer whales overall and "snoozing" humpbacks. However, we had two amazing close approachs by two different mother and calf pairs as well as a couple of minke whale sightings!
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| humpback mother-calf pair |
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| calf off the bow! |
The first humpback pair was logging when we arrived. Mom continued resting below the surface most of the time, but the calf would occassionally come right over to the boat! Almost the same situation occurred with the second mother and calf pair. Both whales would log or slowly travel and the calf would get curious and come "visit" while mom was resting below the surface. What amazing encounters this afternoon!
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| close approaches by a humpback calf |
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| humpback mom and calf |
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