Today on the 12pm whale watch aboard the Aurora, we headed to Stellwagen and had wonderful looks of a slow traveling fin whale.

Mouth of the fin whale just as it surfaced

This whale was deep feeding making big half-moon turns while it surfaced, foraging after small schooling fish. The whale was also exhibiting some resting behavior— doing a bit of tail-rising as it logged at the surface.

Passengers had front row seats to see the fluke of the fin whale just breaking the surface.

This fin was exceptionally cooperative today with short dives and giving passengers great looks as it approached the boat, and even showed us a bit of its fluke! It’s quite a “fluke” occurrence to see the tail of a fin whale, their bodies are very streamlined so that they don’t need to lift their tail out of the water for propulsion when they dive deep.

A rainbow just before this afternoon's storms arrived

-- Laura