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| 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.
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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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