This afternoon on the Aurora, Captain Jeff navigated us to some very exciting humpback whales. We started out with Cajun and her 2015 calf, Jabiru and her 2015 calf and Pele! Upon our arrival, we were excited to spot the calves milling about at the surface. They began to swim over to our boat, when suddenly one of the calves breached! 

We were excited to have such an amazing look so early in the trip and little did we know, this behavior would be an overarching theme for the rest of the trip. Our first glimpse of the adults was a close swim-by right beneath our bow. The calves continued to curiously inspect our boat and at one point, one calf even rolled to the side to take a look at us! As we watched this group, the calves continued to be surface-active. In the distance we noticed another whale who was splashing quite a bit. Perhaps the calves breaches were getting a response from a distance as it is suspected to be a form of communication. It was difficult to peel ourselves away from this active group of 5 whales, but we decided to wrap up our whale watch with the single whale in the distance which ended up being an exciting sight!

We watched Nile’s 2014 calf (a yearling)  for just about 10 minutes, and the entire time it continuously breached as it traveled! I counted my photos and in that 10 minute span, I photographed 15 breach sequences (and I definitely missed some). I’m willing to bet that this whale was breaching at least twice a minute and it continued breaching as we took our turn towards Boston. Today was unforgettable for myself and hopefully the passengers too. Some folks even got a breaching whale selfie! My favorite thing about days like today is that on any given whale watch we go out into the whales’ natural habitat to see their natural behaviors. No whistles were blow, no one told the whales what to do, their natural behaviors were spectacular all on their own. It was a special day!

— Annie