WSU 8-26-09

Today was a strange day on the water. In the morning we found 4 Humpback whales far to the west of Stellwagen Bank but very close to Gloucester... only 14 miles outside the harbor. These whales were, initially, doing some feeding. One whale (an unidentified juvenile Humpback) repeatedly lunged to the surface and gave us great looks at the way Humpback whales feed. You would have thought that since the whales were feeding, and so there was obviously plenty of food in the area, they would have stayed in that area for the day… but this was not the case.

Tail Breach

By the time we reached that same area on the afternoon trip the whales had completely disappeared! So we started traveling south along the western edge of Stellwagen Bank, searching for the missing whales, when we came across a group of 3 Finback whales and 5-7 Minke whales. These whales were charging through the water as if they were actively perusing schools of fish. In fact, the “fish finder” we have onboard showed that there was a 30-foot-thick layer of “bait fish” just beneath the surface and it was these fish that the whales were no doubt feeding on. We managed some very good looks at a couple of the Fin whales and Minke whales but we wanted to find some Humpback whales and, curiously, there were none in the area despite the abundance of food. So we kept heading south….

Finback Whale

Humpback Whale

After traveling 24 miles (!) south on the bank we finally came across a mother and calf pair of Humpback whales. The mother was a whale called “Follicle” and we stayed with these two whales for about 30 minutes as they swam slowly alongside the boat. Since these whales were moving so slowly at the surface we were able to get good, actually GREAT, looks at them at very close range, but all the while we kept watching for other whales in the area… we didn’t see any.

Humpback Whale Diving

After watching Follicle and calf we decided to head back north towards Gloucester but hoped we might spot another Humpback whale or 2 on the way home. It wasn’t long before another Humpback did, in fact, appear. We headed towards it and got right up alongside. Then a second Humpback surfaced with it! Now we had 2 whales! We only watched these two whales for a couple of minutes when we saw a huge splash a little distance away towards the east. This turned out to be yet another Humpback that was breaching (leaping from the water). Obviously we started in that direction and thankfully the activity kept up and we got some great looks at flipper-slapping and tail-breaching from this whale.

Humpback Whale Fluke

While we were watching the active whale, however, we could see more and more whales moving in towards us from the east. By the time we left we had seen at least 11 Humpback whales in that spot, and all were headed right towards where we had seen whales feeding in the morning! I guess it goes to show that you never really can tell what is going to happen on a whale watch. On a trip that looked as if we might only see 2 whales we ended up with nearly a dozen with lots of surface activity. So it ended up being a great day on the water after all. I wonder what tomorrow will be like…..

Humpback Whale Calf

And for the birders… Birding has been FANTASTIC recently, and the birds have been a lot more consistent than the whales. Large numbers of Cory’s and Greater shearwaters are being seen each trip. Smaller numbers (but always present) of Sooty’s are also seen. Interestingly, Manx shearwaters have, after an unusually long absence, started to appear on both Stellwagen Bank and Jeffrey’s Ledge. I don’t see them every trip, but they are definitely becoming more common.

Cory's shearwater

The best birding day of the year to date was August 16^th on Jeffrey’s Ledge (actually it was a great day whale wise too). We saw all four shearwater species, including an entirely white sooty shearwater! It looked like the Fairy prions I saw in Antarctica! See a photo of this shearwater taken by Len Medlock HERE (external link). As if that wasn’t enough I also spotted 2 Long-tailed jaegers that same trip. Very cool.

Fall must be getting close, because we are seeing more and more migrant birds. Red-necked (and occasionally Red) phalaropes are moving through, as are small flocks of shorebirds. A female Blackburnian warbler also landed on the boat this week and stayed aboard until we got ashore. Hopefully it was just the rest she needed to continue on her migration south.

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All photos on this page were taken aboard the 7 Seas Whale Watch boat "Privateer IV"

Some of the BEST photographs on this site were taken aboard our whale watching trips by our good friend Oktay Kaya. To see more of Oktay's beautiful whale photographs and other wildlife pictures he has taken please visit his site at http://www.whalesandwhales.com