Our first humpback sighting of the season...WELCOME BACK CORK!

Hello everyone, I have some great news.....we had our first humpback sighting of the season and it was Cork, an 8 year old female. Cork was first brought to the Bay of Fundy by her mom, Mica, in 2002 and we have been watching her every season since 2004.

Our morning started with fin whales, the mother and calf pair we have been spending time with and then John decided to take a run off shore and search for the humpback that was reported yesterday, we took a run up the shoreline of Campobello yesterday as well but it was a bit rough and we had no luck. This morning, right in the Grand Manan Channel we found our first humpback whale of the 2010 season and we were SO happy when we saw it was Cork.

Not only did we see Cork on our morning departure but we saw her on all 3 trips today, and we saw the mom and calf fin whale on all 3 trips as well. This afternoon we even had a "hat trick", seeing fin whales, a humpback and a minke....all 3 species of whales we commonly see in our part of the Bay of Fundy.

Below are some pictures of Cork I took today, I also took some video that I will make sure to post tomorrow.

Humpbacks are IDed by the pigmentation on the underside of their tails and Cork got her name from the cork-shape on the right hand side of her fluke.


Check out her nostrils, called blowholes


Here you can see her unique dorsal fin


The bird sightings were fantastic today as well....northern gannets, storm petrels, greater shearwaters, razorbills.....was so great.

Oh, I also wanted to mention that we picked up a special "stowaway" on our AM departure....a little brown bat joined the boat in the Grand Manan Channel.....and not all of our passengers were thrilled.


Thanks so much for checking in today, check back tomorrow for some video of Cork and more sightings,

Cheers,
Danielle