Almost the end of July!

Hello everyone, I can't believe that it is almost the end of July.  We had a great day today spending time with both minke and finback whales on both our morning and afternoon trips and we saw 2 finbacks on our evening trip (even saw some lunge feeding and some really close looks at night).

Here are some pictures from today

Minke whale

Characteristic minke whale surface

Unique minke whale dorsal fin

Finback

On our afternoon trip we also stopped at Whitehorse Island and we saw a bald eagle enjoy his "lunch"....a young herring gull chick.

Thanks for checking in today,

Cheers,
Danielle

Razorbill chick and father

Bird Blog

There is a new post from Nick on the Bird Blog....CHECK IT OUT!

Quoddy Link Birds

Wet and Foggy Day

Hello everyone, well, we had a wet and foggy day but we were filled with great passengers and got some great sightings.  On our 10am trip we watched Slice, a minke whale, in the Islands as well as a pair of finbacks who were hanging out together off Bliss Island.  On our afternoon departure we found a friendly little minke whale who got quite curious with the Quoddy Link and we also saw a basking shark.

Finback

Finback

Fin whale off Bliss Island

Thanks for checking in today, we are hoping for better weather tomorrow.

Cheers,
Danielle

Minkes, fins and a Mola mola!

Good evening everyone, we had another great day on the water with both minke and finback whales on all 3 trips.  As well we had a very special sighting of a Mola mola, or ocean sunfish, on our 10am departure!  To learn more about Mola mola check them out here.

Mola mola

Mola mola

Mola mola

Minke whale, 10am

Fin whale 10am

Finback whale 10am

Fin whale 2pm, note the lower white, right jaw

Minke whale, Slice, 5:30pm

Fin whale, 5:30pm

Most of the seals seemed to be sleepy today.....most of them....

Sleepy harbour seals

Sleepy female grey seal

Harbour seal

These guys were so not sleeping, lots of growling!

Thanks for checking in with us today!

Cheers,
Danielle

Lunge Feeding Fin

Hello everyone, what a great day we had today!  This morning we ran offshore towards the Bank and we found a large finback whale, a new individual for this season!  We got some great looks and on our way back in we passed another fin whale.

Large finback we found off South Wolf

On our afternoon trip we spent some time with a finback whale close to Whitehorse but there was a lot of boat traffic so we decided to venture a little further out and we noticed some large splashes towards Eastern Wold so we made our way over and found a fin whale lunge feeding!  We spent around 45 minutes with this whale and he would lunge feed, breath a few times and pick up speed (we would see the fluke prints at the surface) and then he would lunge feed again.  We must have seen 10-15 lunge feeds but with very few birds feeding in the area it was very difficult to predict where he would come up so I wasn't able to get any great pics.

First finback we stopped with

Lunge feed!  You can see the extended ventral pleats

This was the lunger!

Another lunge 

Of course we stopped with seals and eagles on both trips as well!

I am sure you can guess what he is doing

Greater shearwater

Cheers,
Danielle

Fin Whales!

Hello everyone, yesterday was a great day to be on the Bay!  We started our morning with new large finback in our area.  I immediately noticed the large scar on the whales back and thought it could be the individual we saw last season and when I compared my photos to those from 2011 it looks to be a match.  This large whale has healed wonderfully and seems to be doing just great!

Note the scar

I had the rest of the day off but Jolinne let me know they had 4-5 finbacks spread out feeding between Bliss Island and Blacks Harbour and they has one large finback on their evening trip!  I am back on the water tomorrow but I will leave you with some seal photos :)

One of many young harbour seal pups on Whitehorse Island.  Seems to be the place for these little ones to hang out these days

Cheers,
Danielle

SW winds and hungry whales

Hello everyone, we had some strong SW winds to deal with today.  This morning it wasn't too bad and we spent time close to Bliss with the same large finback we have been seeing inshore for the past few weeks.  The fin whale was feeding close to the surface and there were lots of seabirds in the area as well feeding on the herring including shearwaters, terns and alcids.  On our 2pm and 5:30 trips we stayed in the protected areas of the Islands and watched minke whales.  On both trips we saw quite a bit of lunge feeding right at the surface.

Manx shearwarter

Arctic tern

Minke whale, Slice

Thanks for checking in today, more winds in the forecast for tomorrow....

Cheers,
Danielle

3 great trips on the Bay

Hello everyone, we had 3 great trips on the Bay today.  Our day started with a run offshore to avoid boat traffic around a fin whale and we found another large finback in the offshore area.  We also found 3 minke whales and one even got a little curious with the boat

We made our way back inshore and spent time with the fin whale we passed by earlier

On our 2pm trip the SW wind had picked up so a lot of the traffic had gone back to port.  We spent time with the same large fin whale we had inshore earlier in the day.

Check out the lower right jaw!

On the evening run we got to see Slice, a minke whale who is missing it's dorsal fin.  We did take a small run out to see if we could locate a finback but didn't have any luck.

We also saw bald eagles, porpoise and seals on all 3 trips.

Harbour seal pup on Whitehorse

Harbour seals

Juvenile bald eagle over Whitehorse

Thanks for checking in today!

Cheers,
Danielle