What a beautiful, warm fall day for whale watching! This afternoon aboard the Asteria, we were pleased to see Salt’s newest grand calf (excluding her great grand calf, Etch-a-sketch’s calf) for the first time!

Thalassa off the bow, check out how broad she is all fattened up for the winter!

Thalassa and calf

Thalassa, born to Salt back in 1985, has been seen with her calf throughout the feeding season a number of times this year, but we hadn’t come across the duo until today. This experienced mom and her 2014 calf were with a whale named Lilium this afternoon.

Lillium, Thalassa and calf

This trio spent the entire whale watch circling our boat, popping up over and over on either side. The calf seemed to be the most curious member of the group and the others joined along. I have never seen whale approach a boat so many times in all my whale watches.

Thalassa's calf

It was really exciting to see such interactive behavior which allowed us to view this calf almost within arm’s reach as we idled and allowed the calf to move about. It even did a little flipper slapping for us at one point! We had amazing looks of Thalassa too who is an enormous whale!!

Photo op: Thalassa's calf's head

Thalassa's calf was a very curious whale

Nearby, we spotted at least three other humpback whales and possibly a fin whale. One of the these humpbacks came close enough for us to ID it as Palette which is another new sighting for us!

There were lots of northern gannets out today but few other birds on the corner. We did, however, see a number of different duck species around the harbor that were a little too far away from us to identify. Overall, we had a great day of whale watching!

Tasia