9/7/14

2014 Sightings | September 7

We had an outstanding day out on the water! In the morning, we headed out to the NW corner. It was a bit windy and choppy, but we were able to find whales without a problem because they were so surface active!

Buzzard's chin slap

We started off our trip with Buzzard who was breaching up a storm! Watching Buzzard breach over and over again was an amazing start to the trip. The whale even did a few chin slaps right off our starboard side. There were many scattered blows, so we decided to investigate a few.

A humpback super group!

We spent some time with Shuffleboard as well as one other unidentified humpback who had a bit of a lazy fluke! Trips with breaching are few and far between, so we were very lucky to have had such exciting sightings!

A great look at the whales' fringe of baleen

Just when we thought we had seen it all, we travelled out to the NW corner in the afternoon to find 10-15 kick-feeding humpbacks! These whales were joining and splitting all over the place, making it a bit difficult to keep track of the different associations, although, a messy data sheet is a sign of an exciting trip! All of these whales were actively feeding at the surface within less than a square mile of each other.

Open mouth feeding—let the filtering begin!

It’s not every day we get to see such a high concentration of whales, so we really lucked out! It was awesome watching each whale exhibit its own kick-feeding strategy, however, sometimes watching kick-feeding is the most difficult when it comes to IDing the whales because their tails are often flopped over, making it tricky to see the underside.

A righty humpback: Note the scarring on this whale's top jaw, may be an indication of how it feeds along the sandy bottom

Over the course of the trip we definitely saw Buzzard, Shuffleboard, Sirius, Jabiru and Springboard! Towards the end of the trip, a group of 5 humpbacks joined up to feed! Check out the picture of the five open-mouth-feeding humpbacks! It was an amazing trip! Definitely one I will remember for a long time!

—Annie G.

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