This morning on the Asteria we headed to mid Bank and had an amazing whale watch. There were blows all around us and areas of animals feeding in every direction. We have been able to identify a total of nine humpback whales, including two calves, and photographed a 10th whale which unknown.
 

Mystery whale

We started out with Glo-stick and calf. The calf was doing some energetic breaches – always fun to see! This is Glo-stick’s first known calf and the fourth generation of calves to be identified on Stellwagen Bank. We also know this little calf’s grandmother, Scylla and great-grandmother, Istar.

Springboard

We moved on to Springboard and Aswan who were doing some great bubble feeding, creating huge circles of bubbles underwater and coming up open mouthed in the middle to catch fish. Springboard is a female first sighted in 1997 and Aswan is a 3rd generation male. Aswan’s mother is Nile who we saw so much of last year.

Open-mouth feeding: exhibit A

We then found another mother and calf pair which were joined by a third animal. It’s quite common to see mother-calf pairs joined by an escort. In this case the mother and escort were engaging in some bubble feeding while the calf regaled us with numerous tail breaches. It took a bit of id-ing but we figured out that this mother is a whale named Vulture. Vulture was first seen in 1988 and has had numerous calves since then. The escort is an animal named Thunderstorm, a whale first seen in 2009.

Calf doing some frisky tail breaches

Last but certainly not least we joined a group of four animal doing some very impressive bubble rings and open mouth feeding. We spotted Pleats, Cajun, Aswan again, and our unidentified whale.

It was fantastic trip with many different animals and lots of exciting behaviors.

Cheers!
Tegan