July 14, 2009
Well we certainly had a nice morning on the Friendship V! Passengers were treated to great looks at terns,puffins, razorbills, and many black guillemonts at Petit Manan. We even had a common murre fly-by! The pelagic bird diversity was great offshore as well including sooty and greater shearwaters, northern gannets, a juvenile northern fulmar, and numerous wilson storm petrels!
The whales were also numerous offshore. We spotted at least 9-10 finback whales on this trip! And we were fortunate enough to get some amazing looks. We first found two pairs of finbacks swimming in close proximity of each other. It seemed like these whales were circling around in search of or corralling their prey. One pair of finbacks suddenly surfaced near the boat! A whale went under the boat while the other came right across the bow! It was AMAZING! I could not believe how enormous this whale was! Captain Larry was able to spot the other whale on the fish finder and watch it as it quickly dived down to 150 feet below the surface! Check out this video of this close encounter. My apologies for the video beinging a bit bouncy. I was so excited I could not hold the camera still!
After those incredible looks we decided to do some more exploring and soon came across a group of 5 finbacks. People were in awe as they saw the entire group surface together. We were lucky to have such great whales out there today.
The second trip was just as exciting! Naturalists Zack and Linda reported seeing a humpback whale named Canine! This whale was born in 2005 to a humpback named Siphon. The boat was also treated to great looks at 4 finback whales with one group of three traveling together. There were also jumping tuna and many birds.
The last trip wrapped up the day nicely with 3 humpback whales. Two of the three were juveniles, one of which was very curious, coming very close to the boat! The other humpback was Triton! An old favorite to our area. So an another great day and the chance to see two of Allied Whale's adopt-a-whales: Triton and Canine!
