June 25, 2012 Whale Watches

9 am and 2 pm Whale Watches - Michael

9 am trip:

While we did get caught in the rain for parts of our whale watch today, it seemed like the whales didn’t mind, as we still got to see some great behaviors.  The majority of our trip was spent with a mother and calf pair of humpback whales.  Boomerang and her calf were very active, while Boomerang went down on deeper dives to feed; her calf spent a lot of time up at the surface breaching. 

Boomerang's calf. 

We got a chance to see full breaches, tail breaches, and many fluke out dives. Even in the pouring rain the calf was very playful and it kept everyone onboard in a great mood!  In addition to these two humpbacks we also saw a minke whale and two finback whales in the area. 

2 pm trip:

While the clouds on today’s afternoon whale watch looked ominous, we were lucky enough to dodge the rain while out on Stellwagen bank for today’s whale watch, and we got some great whale sightings!

Most of our trip was spent with two humpback whales, Scylla and her calf.  Scylla’s calf was very energetic up at the surface.  We saw several tail breaches from the calf, and multiple fluke out dives from both mom and calf.  The calf also did some inverted tail lobbing, which occurs when the whale flips over underwater with its tail above the water and then slaps it down on the surface multiple times. 

We then left Scylla and her calf and got a closer look at an individual humpback named Orbit who fluked out several times.  Before leaving the bank we reunited with Scylla and her calf for a few last looks before heading home to Plymouth.