Today on the Aurora’s 12 pm whale watch, we headed north toward Thatcher’s Island off Cape Ann, MA in hopes of finding some whales. We ended up spotting Pinball near the southern portion of Jeffrey’s Ledge.

Pinball makes a terminal dive: Notice her distinctly hooked dorsal fin and bright white flippers just under the surface (They appear sea foam green from all the phytoplankton in the water).

Pinball is a female humpback whale and seen around this area yesterday. Today, Pinball was mostly deep feeding, but taking short dives, approximately 3 minutes each. She spent several minutes at the surface in between dives and gave passengers great looks. They were able to see Pinball’s face as she lunged forward a couple times while surfacing!

While we were with Pinball, we also got a quick glimpse of two minke whales and notice some large splashing in the distance that looked suspiciously like tuna breaching. The weather was better than expected, and folks were quite content with sunshine and whales!

-- Christine