New Humpback Whale! I DO love my job!

Hey everyone, it's Danielle with Quoddy Link back from another fantastic fall day on the Bay of Fundy. Today we had the pleasure of adding a new humpback whale to our 2007 list which brings our count to 21 for the season! We spotted this humpback just off South Wolf Light, and he certainly caught out attention by doing 2 full breaches and then waving his very long, white pectoral flippers in the air. This all happened over 1/2 mile away but everyone was so excited. When we got a closer look Melanie and myself quickly realized it was a new humpback whale. It's so exciting to see a new whale out there and discovering who they are and it is probably my favorite part of my job. We also quickly noticed that this was a big humpback, at least 40-45 feet long, much larger than the humpbacks we have been watching for most of the season.
Here is the dorsal fin of our new humpback whale. There is also a scar on the tail stock that could be from any number of incidents including entanglement, ship strike or a battle scar from the mating grounds.

Just as we were about to start making our way back to St. Andrews our unknown humpback gave us what is probably the most beautiful tail raise I have seen in my 6 years with Quoddy Link Marine. He just started to raise his tail slowly then arched so high and brought not only his fluke but his entire caudal region out of the water. Below is a photo sequence of this dive.

I have these pictures into Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies for identification and I will make sure to let you know as soon as I hear something! I also wanted to mention, for those bird lovers out there, today we had our first official sighting of white-winged scoters in Passamaquoddy Bay. Thanks for checking in today!!