Hello everyone, it's Danielle with Quoddy Link Marine with some amazing sightings to report. It's so hard to believe that it is the second week of October but with the first day in a few with calm seas we sent Matt out on our Scout Boat to see what he could find a little further from home. With a boat load of eager passengers we got a call from Matt that he had found at least 5-6 humpback whales and about the same number of fin whales all within about 1/4 mile of each other! Needless to say we made our way directly offshore towards our Scout Boat. We passed a few finback whales off the northern tip of Campobello Island but we had to put "blinders" on and continue offshore but it was well worth it! There were blows in every direction....both finback and humpback whales....at one point we had 5 humpback whales on the forward right hand side of the boat and a finback on the other, and then a finback surfaced so close to the boat that a few words that are usually not part of my interpretation came out! In my 7 years I don't remember seeing so many humpbacks and finbacks on one trip. Now to the details.....As I have mentioned before we photograph the humpback whales we see (humpbacks are IDed by the pigmentation of black and white on the underside of their flukes) and I was very busy today. I managed to get photos of 6 individual humpback whales (I am SURE I missed a few). 3 are ones I could identify, 2 are new (one of the new whales is pictured above left) and 1 is a familiar "face" from last season! The photo below is EKG.
This is Cork, a 6 year old female humpback.
This is one of the new humpbacks we saw today...also a familiar face (I'm almost positive, I have the photo into PCCS to be confirmed)...this is Spinnaker, a 4 year old female.
This is the other new humpback that I do not recognize.
We also saw the humpback that was disentangled in December/07 off Grand Manan. I have included a drawing of the entanglement (the entanglement was made worse as it happened during a winter storm). This whale has yet to be matched to a previously catalogued whale, if it cannot be matched it will be put up for naming next spring.
I wanted to leave you with a photo I took the other day of 2 minke whales travelling side-by-side, not something we see very often. Thanks for checking in today, I will keep you posted as I hear about the ID's of our new whales....and I hope to have more great sightings for you all tomorrow! Cheers.
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