April 21, 2012 - Whale Watch - Joanne

12 noon Whale Watch - Joanne

We had an incredible day of whale watching on Saturday, 2 ft chop, clear, sunny skies and a brisk southerly wind.

We traveled off the southern edge of the Gerry E. Studds-Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary and had the most outstanding display of side lung feeding by a pair of endangered finback whales which were surrounded by a pod of Atlantic White Sided Dolphins and hundreds of Northern Gannets. The pair lunged straight towards us giving us one of the most outstanding views of the mouths opening wide with the ventral grooves fully extended and fish in their mouths.

The feeding displays continued with 8-10 surface feeding humpback whales—kick feeding, bubble cloud feeding, bubble net feeding, open mouths, even a few tail breaches and lob tailing.  Several of the whales passing right under our boat and bow.

  

Dolphins and gannets remained spread out and associated with all of the groups of whales, indicating just how much food was present and close to the surface.

Individual humpback seen and identified included: Cajun*, Ganesh*, Hancock, Hazard, Photon*, Pumpkinseed, Pitcher, & Ventisca* (four* of which were mom's in 2011).

April 20. 2012 - 12 noon Whale Watch - Krill

12 noon Whale Watch - Krill

We headed offshore with high hopes of seeing whales and dolphins offshore and we were not disappointed. As we headed toward the southwest corner of Stellwagen Bank, we saw splashing and blows in the distance. To our delight, we realized that we had large baleen whales and dolphins feeding together at the surface.

Also in this area were large numbers of Northern gannets were who performing amazing aerial displays as they were feeding right alongside the larger whales.

The whales were able to push the bait to the surface and this gave us incredible views all around the boat. As we moved from group to group, we realized that we had at least 12 and possibly as high as 15 humpback whales feeding together. The dolphins were feeding with the humpbacks and they would often surface right next to the boat or directly under the bow sprint as they were chasing the bait.

We took lots of photos of the whales and have been working on photo-identification since we got home. So far, these are the humpbacks we have been able to identify: Ventisca, Nazka, Circus, Ventisca's 2008 calf, Scylla's 2008 calf, Pitcher, Fern, Hazard, Aplus, Bombay, and Twinkle.

We would like to thank Jenna and Jooke from the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies for all their help in confirming these identifications. Captain John Boats shares its sighting data with this organization as a way of contributing to the longterm database on humpback whales in the Gulf of Maine.