What a BEAUTIFUL day we had offshore today! The sun was shining and the seas were calm. There was an abundance of life on the feeding ground today. The wildlife was also closer to shore than usual. We only had to go about 20 miles out, 5 miles shy of the Ball Park, the area in which we go to find the whales.
At Petit Manan Island we had many nice looks at the puffins. We saw many terns and puffins carrying fish in their mouths as the flew towards the island! The researchers on Petit Manan reported over 100 pairs of nesting puffins-a new record number for this nesting island! Puffins, razorbills, and terns flew by the boat as we talked with Brian, the research station manager.
We eventually left Petit Manan to head offshore to search for whales. As we traveled through the glass calm waters, we saw many harbor porpoise, seals, jumping tuna, and birds including sooty and greater shearwaters, Wilson and Leech's storm petrels, northern gannets, and northern fulmars. Then we suddenly spotted a blow.
It was a finback whale. We got a few good looks, but Captain Jerry received calls from a couple of boats- the Lovely Lucy and a fishing vessel that found whales along the northern boarder of the Ball Park. So we decided to go check them out.As we spotted the Lovely Lucy in the distance a whale surfaced. It was a humpback whale! After spending a little time with this whale we spotted more blows and found another humpback whale.
There were whales all around us! We got a glimpse at a second finback whale that surfaced close enough for us to get a couple of nice looks. Eventually, we had run out of time and had to head back in. The captain told me that there was a lot of bait below the surface. A beautiful morning with 2 finbacks and 2 humpbacks.
Our afternoon trip was also just as enjoyable. The first whales we found were Siphon and her calf. This is a mother and calf humpback whale pair that we have seen over the last few days. Siphon and the calf were resting at the surface.We also had looks at two large finbacks that surfaced nearby. Like this morning there were many blows all around us and there was a patch of fish 100 feet thick coming up from the bottom of the ocean floor!
And suddenly the calf and Siphon became very active and the calf breached two times!
