Whale Watching Trips September 1, 2010

1100 Whale Watch - Tammy

Today we had a beautiful, but hot day offshore with calm seas and no wind. Our first sighting of the day was a group of 6 or 7 Humpbacks. Some of the whales in this group included Perseid and calf, Cajun and calf and Milkweed. Perseid’s calf was logging for several minutes while the rest of the group was on a dive. The group surfaced several boat lengths away on the other side of our boat and we got to see a close approach by Perseid’s calf as he swam to join the group!

Right after leaving this group, we saw a fin breaking the surface of the water. This fin likely belonged to a basking shark. Unfortunately, the shark disappeared before we could get a good look, but it was still exciting to have a basking shark sighting.

Don't forget that the New England Coastal Wildlife Alliance, a local nonprofit that collaborates with Captain John Boats, maintains a community sighting network for basking sharks and ocean sunfish. This network is called NEBShark, short for the New England Basking Shark Project. Anyone in the community who sees a basking shark or ocean sunfish is asked to report sightings to NEBShark to help biologists learn more about these very large coastal pelagic fish that also feed off New England. Send in your sightings through the mail or through the NEBShark website at www.nebshark.org.

Throughout the day we had humpback whales off in the distance in every direction. These whales were likely feeding below the surface. Before we headed home we got a good look at a pair of whales travelling together towards our boat. These two Humpbacks were Dracula and Strike.

As we started to head back to Plymouth, we had an unidentified humpback whale off in the distance behind our boat lob-tailing, where a whale will hang upside-down in the water column and repeatedly slap its tail flukes on the surface of the water. We could still hear these powerful slaps even when we were about a mile away!

A great way to end our whale watch!

Whale Watching Trips August 30, 2010

11:00 Whale Watch - Lauren

We had a beautiful day offshore this morning a great way to wrap up the summer! It was a nice sunny day with a mild NW wind at about 5-10kts, and with a mild swell of about 1-1.5ft. Our first sighting today was of a very active humpback whale that we could see lobtailing, flipper slapping, and breaching in the distance. So we headed straight for this whale! As we began traveling to check this active little guy out, another unknown humpback came up right in front of the boat! Just goes to show how unpredictable these wild animals are and that they can pop up anywhere and you always need to be careful when offshore around whales.

Our captain did a great job maneuvering around this whale who clearly had another destination in mind as he did not stick around. So we went on to get a closer look at this very active whale. When we got closer to this acrobatic whale we found her flipper slapping, rolling on her back and side waving howdy to all of our passengers. She then went on a deeper dive and came up breaching! Our passengers were in for a real treat as she developed a little routine where she would breach a few times, then come up and flipper slap a little, then start all over again! This behavior went on for a good ten minutes before she seemed to calm down. I was able to identify this whale as a humpback whale named Buzzard. We left Buzzard to see if we could find other marine mammals to enjoy, as there were several blows in the distance.

We came across another unknown humpback whale, who kept a pretty low profile doing a lot of sub surfacing feeding. As we headed back home we could see another whale breaching and flipper slapping in the distance, I am sure that was Buzzard saying good bye! What an amazing day!