This morning on board the Asteria we headed out along the shipping lanes with a plan to head north once we got to the edge of the bank. It was grey skies but we still had decent visibility. Not that far on to the bank we came across, or rather is came across us, a large minke whale which circled us for a while giving the passengers some great looks.

Doric

Everyone was very excited after this first look that when we left in search of some larger whales they were ecstatic when we did find a humpback whale! We found Doric, a 12 year old born in 2001, doing some feeding. This whale was staying down long, around 5 minutes but would surface near us and spend enough time on the water to really get a sense of how big this animal actually is. With the lighting and the close surfacings I was able to get some great shots including the attached photo of the scars on Doric’s right side. You can see the dimple like scar which may be from a sat tag as well as that long scar just above it. Doric also has a scar on its tail just where the fluke meets the tail stock which could be from an entanglement. It was a great day out on the water with some different whales.