Sometimes you have to stop and listen

Hello everyone, I'm sorry it's been a few days since my last post. We have been deep in the fog over the past 3 days. On July 10th we managed to get our 10:00 am and 2:00 pm departure in. On our morning trip we stopped with 2 different minke whales. One minke was off Greens Point Light and the other in the "Happy Hunting Ground", an area affectionately named because traditionally it has been a common area to view whales. We got a call from John on our Scout Boat that he had a humpback whale offshore towards the Wolves. We made our way out and found thick fog but calm seas. In conditions like these what we do is stop, shut our engines down and listen for the whales....yep, listen! It's a very exciting experience and everyone on the boat was great, being very quiet so we could listen for the blow of the whale. On a calm day the blow can be heard up to 2 miles away. We could hear the whale breathing and with much patience, adjusting our position and listening again we were able to locate a single humpback whale. We spend some time with Rhino (you can see her dorsal fin below), a mature female humpback before we had to make our way back to St. Andrews.

Our 2:00 pm departure on July 10th took us back offshore in hopes of seeing Rhino again. The wind had increased and made listening for the whales very difficult. We did see a minke whale and to our delight "she" came over to have a closer look at us. The minke circled the boat many times giving us excellent views of "her" white pectoral flippers. The picture on the left was taken during our 2004 season but I wanted to share it with you, it's exactly like what we saw on our trip. It is very rare to have the curiosity returned and when it happens is absolutely incredible.

All of our departure were cancelled yesterday, July 11th, because of the thick fog.

Today, July 12th, our 10:00 am departure was cancelled as well, because of the fog but we did get out on our 2:00 pm trip and we had a Hat Trick! A Hat Trick is what we call it when we get the opportunity to show our passengers all 3 species of whales commonly seen in our part of the Bay of Fundy. We stopped with a minke whale around Whitehorse Island and then to our surprise a finback whale surfaced close to our boat. After spending some time with these whales we got a call from our Scout Boat that he had a humpback whale. We made our way offshore as the fog was closing in on us but we very happy to find a large hole in the fog when we got to the humpback. We got to spend time with not 1 but 2 humpback whales, Rhino and an unidentified smaller humpback (there are no photos, it was my day off today). Everyone on board had a fantastic trip.

Well, the weather forecast for tomorrow looks good and I am on the boat all day so I will keep you all posted. Our whale sightings for our 2007 season is still 100% so come and experience the whales of the Bay of Fundy with Quoddy Link Marine, we would love to show you our world.