First Humpback of the 2007 Season!!

Hello everyone, it's Danielle with Quoddy Link Marine with some fantastic news. We had our first humpback whale of the 2007 season today on our 10:00 am trip! We found her.....yes her, her name is Cork, she is a 5 year-old female humpback whale (ID confirmed by Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies)....at the north-west corner of the Owen Basin. Cork was our first humpback in the 2006 season as well (first sighting on July 9th). Humpbacks are individually ID'd by the pigmentation on the underside of their tail, as well as unique scarring and the shape of their dorsal fin. I could easily recognize Cork by her tail and this is her 3rd season with Quoddy Link Marine.


Our morning trip continued with more great sightings as we headed closer to home and stopped with a finback whale off Bliss Island. Below are some pictures of the finback from our 10:00 am trip. The lower left photo shows the unique dorsal fin while the upper right shows the "blaze". The blaze of a finback whale can be seen from the right hand side, where the white colouring of the lower right jaw extends over the head and behind the blowhole. The blaze is an individual marking and can help researchers tell one finback from another.

Our 2:00 pm departure took us a little bit further than expected, about 18 miles from St. Andrews but it was well worth it. With the help of our Scout Boat we were able to find 3 new finback whales. One of the new whales is shown below (the upper right photo is an enlargement of the dorsal fin). Each dorsal fin is unique, have a look at our 10:00 am finback and see if you can see the difference.

We started our evening trips today...to great success, we spent some time with the same finback we had on our morning departure but this time just off the northern tip of Campobello Island, NB.

That's all for now, keep checking for more sightings from Quoddy Link Marine.