July 15, 2012 Whale Watches

9 am Whale Watch - Krill 

Blog written by NECWA intern Carly Hepburn:

Minke whale

We had another beautiful morning whale watching today on the backside of Cape Cod by the Highland Light, Truro.  We saw 7 humpback whales, 4-6 minke whales, and a quick glimpse of a gray seal.  

Flock

Our first sighting of humpback whales was a group of two that we identified as Flock and Mar's 2008 calf.  Flock was first seen in 2008 but we are not sure of this whales age. We stayed and watched these two whales for a little while but then moved on once we spotted a few blows farther up ahead. 

Humpback whale surfacing.

Our next group of humpback whales was another pair who we identified as Eruption and Pele. Pele is a male humpback whale first seen in 1997. Eruption is a 13-year old female humpback whale who is the daughter of Dusky.  In 2008 Eruption had her first calf who has not yet been named. We saw both Eruption and Pele logging, a  resting on the surface. 

Eruption

Pele

Once again we saw more blows up ahead and headed over to our final sighting of our whale watching trip. This was another pair of humpback whales and we were able to identify one of the pair as a whale named Snowslide.  Snowslide was first sighted in 2007 .  Snowslide and the unknown whale were doing deep dives and were feeding under the surface of the water.  After we watched the pair of humpback whales come up one last time we headed back to Plymouth after an exciting morning whale watching.  

11 am Whale Watch - Diane

Wow!  Today was a hot one and we were all happy to get off the dock.  The sea conditions were beautiful as we headed out towards the backside of the Cape and came within sight of the "golf ball" which if off Highland Light, Truro. 


There were a number of humpbacks   in the area but we followed two adults that were feeding deep and staying down for five minute dives. We got some close looks but not a lot of tail flukes.  We had at least 5 minkes in the distance.  

As we headed home we saw a huge splash that indicated a humpback had come right out of the water.   We stopped to have a look and found our old friend Echo.  This was confirmed by our onboard photographer Mikaela, who got a beautiful shot of the tail flukes. We also had two harbor seals pop up for a visit.  It was a wonderful day to be offshore!

Common Tern

2 pm Whale Watch - Krill 

Blog report written by NECWA intern Katherine McKenna

Great Black Backed Gull with lunch.

Great Black Backed Gull with lunch.

Mar's 2009 calf fluking out

Snowslide flaking out next to lobster buoy. 

Snowslide

Mar's 2009 calf

Snowslide

As we headed out to the backside of the Cape for our afternoon whale watch the winds began to pick up and the cloud cover began to increase which cooled us off on this scorching hot day. 

We were hoping that this would lead to some great sightings as humpback whales tend to get more active as the winds first pick up. Around Race Point we spotted many species of birds including manx, greater, sooty, and Corey’s shearwaters that were feeding on some baitfish at the surface.

Snowslide 

We kept our eyes peeled for some feeding whales since these birds feed on the same fish as humpback whales. Seeing a large group of feeding birds is therefore a good indicator of potential feeding whales. With no whales surface feeding, we decided to head towards a pair of blows we spotted off Highland Light, Truro. As we approached this pair we were able to identify one of the humpbacks as Snowslide who was spotted earlier on the morning trip.

This pair was doing a series of short, forceful dives which are typically an indicator of subsurface feeding. At one point, these whales were moving very fast leading us to believe they were chasing after their prey, the North American sand lance. 

Captain Tommy O’Reilly, did a fantastic job of predicting their movements and was able to give passengers on both sides of the boat some great views as the whales surfaced and fluked out right next to the boat multiple times. 

Young gray seal.

While the whales were down on a deep dive, we had a sighting of a gray seal swimming at the surface. We decided to leave these whales and travel to another location where whales had been spotted earlier. Although we didn’t spot any humpbacks, we got some great looks at some minke whales.