On this morning's whale watch aboard the Asteria, we headed back to SW corner to find scattered bubble net feeding and breaching behaviors of about 12-15 humpbacks.

The sea birds know where the good eats are at!

One of our feeding groups included Geometry, Yoo Hoo, Osprey, Weathervane, and Eraser making repeated spiral bubble nets – we also had Milkweed and her calf in this mix early on, with her calf milling around at the surface while mom fed with the group. The gulls today especially seemed to swarm in high numbers today. At any given time, we had 1-2 other bubble nets around us in the distance – and also had a calf breaching repeatedly even farther away.

Breaching calf with herring gulls

Our big feeding group eventually became a feeding frenzy of 7-9 humpbacks, and we wrapped up our final looks of the group with spectacular open mouth feeding (see photos of Geometry, Yoo Hoo, and Osprey). What made it even more spectacular was a double breach of Nile and her calf in the distance! We wrapped up the trip by getting looks of our earlier breaching calf – which turned out to be Echo’s (see herring gull’s humpback calf photobomb photo).

Open mouth feeding

Another wonderful (but windy!) day!

This afternoon, we headed out to the southwest corner and found the usual large groups of humpback whales. There were many groups and we got the chance to see quite a few different animals but we mainly stayed with Cajun, Wizard and Wizard’s calf.

Wizard and calf

The calf was very playful, doing tons of tail lobs which meant I got a lot of good pictures of this juvenile’s tail for future fluke matching!

Echo kicks

We also got a see a big group of Geometry, Osprey, Daffodil and Echo and calf doing big bubble rings and kick feeding! And another number of animals that I wasn’t able to identify like the picture of a mother and calf. There was tons of activity, bubble rings, breaches, kick feeding going on in every direction that it was a truly great trip!

Unknown mother and calf

— Laura and Tegen