This morning on board the Sanctuary with Captain Adam we headed out through the shipping lanes towards the middle of Stellwagen Bank. With clouds overhead, we worried about possibility of precipitation, but luckily you couldn’t rain on the whale parade today!
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| Venom calf breach |
Our first encounter with whales involved Cajun, a humongous humpback, taking a dive right under the boat! Cajun was spotted all over the place today, floating between different groups of whales all throughout the area. We spent some time with Crisscross, Mend, Mostaza and her 2016 calf, Venom and her 2016 calf.
While the adults were busy feeding below the surface, Venom’s calf would stroll over to hang out with the excited passengers on board our vessel! This energetic calf even breached a couple times which is always surprising and exciting! This calf may be getting a reputation for being particularly loveable this season, because this whale continued to WOW us with close-up looks!
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| What a breach! |
This afternoon on the Sanctuary with Captain Dave we headed out east to Mid-bank where we were treated to some pretty epic humpbacks! This morning the forecast threatened thunderstorms, but instead we were treated to clear skies and a load of awesome whales! We started off with a juvenile humpback who was tail-slapping up a storm!
This whale tail slapped for many minutes, threw in a few tail throws and flipper slaps and then finally pooped! After the whale’s fecal plume dissipated, the whale took a dive and we decided to move on. We spotted Venom, Venom’s 16 Calf, Perseid, Cajun, Mostaza and Mostaza’s 16 Calf. After a little while, Venom’s very curious calf paid us a call and came over to check us out. The adults split up a bit leaving us with Perseid, Venom and Calf.
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| Venom's calf's fluke |
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| Close approach by calf |
It didn’t take long for us to lose focus of the adults in the area because Venom’s calf and another calf decided to spend the last 15 minutes of our trip holding us hostage! Between intermittent breaches, the calves milled around on both sides of the boat, swimming around close to the pulpits, blowing snarge on the passengers. In the distance we noticed some surface activity from some of the adults in the area who congregated close together. Eventually the calves moved far enough away for us to, as Captain Dave put it “make a getaway.”
What a great day!
— Annie
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