On the 1:30 trip on board the Aurora we left Boston to find that the seas had calmed down a little since the morning trip and we were able to make out trip out to Stellwagen to once again see amazing feeding humpback whales.

Open mouth feeding

Emerging from the bubble net

In total we were able to identify 14 humpback whales today including three mother and calf pairs! We started out with a group of three: Geometry, Daffodil, and Osprey who were bubble feeding and making huge rings of bubble blasts! This group seemed to be moving towards a very large group of whales so we were lucky to find ourselves between both groups of bubble feeding animals! This large group consisted of Orbit, Cajun, Yoo-hoo, Dome, Tongs and calf, and Milkweed and calf. It was amazing to see so many animals feeding together like this, the coordination under the water must be some to behold!

So close! A close surface from Osprey, Geometry and Daffodil

We stayed the majority of the trip between these two groups and got great views of the animals, especially we they made a few close approaches to the boat. The most exciting moment of the trip was likely our group of Osprey, Geometry, and Daffodil feeding practically below our bow pulpit! As the bubble clouds rose to the surface I could actually see the sand lance swirling around! We also had a quick pass by of Grackle with Wizard and her calf!

It is wonderful to see the evidence of, or in the case today, the actual fish that this feeding behavior is all based around. I hope everyone else enjoyed the trip as much as me!

— Tegan

On our first trip this morning, we set out bright and early for Stellwagen Bank. The first whales we came across were Vulture and her calf accompanied by Osprey. Vulture and Osprey displayed beautiful open mouth feeding behavior while the subdued calf swam nearby. Shortly after we arrived, Daffodil and Grackle joined the group. Soon Grackle wondered away and Tongs and her calf, who spent a lot of time right near the boat, joined the group.

Osprey and Eraser feeding

As the whales fed, I was astounded by the size difference between Vulture and Daffodil. Looking at their heads and jaws as the two lunged side by side out of the water, it appeared that Daffodil was about half the size of Vulture. While Vulture was first seen in 1988, we know she is at least 26 but are not certain quite how old she is. Females being larger than males, she is one of the largest humpbacks I have seen. Daffodil, on the other hand, is only eight years old. She definitely has some growing to do; nonetheless, she is an exceptionally small whale. Just like some people are naturally much taller than others, some whales will grow to be larger than others. Even as they took a dive to start another round of bubble feeding, the size difference in their flukes was obvious.

Vulture and Daffodil drawing a crowd of seagulls

Arriving at the surface with a mouthful of fish and sea water

Pleats fully extended

Among the many feeding groups in the area, Yoo hoo and Measles were also feeding very close by. Throughout the scattered feeding groups were a few minkes and a fin whale who swam about 50 yards off our bow. We even saw two humpbacks in a nearby group do a double breach which was a fantastic end to a great trip.

This afternoon the groups seemed a little more scattered than they had been earlier in the day. We first watched Eraser and Osprey feeding who were eventually joined by Samara and Aswan. We had especially amazing looks of Eraser and Osprey when they created a bubble net right at our stern!

We watched as the water poured out of one Eraser’s mouth.

One of the highlights of our trip was a seagull eating sand lance right off one of their backs!

As we wondered around the feeding whales, we also saw Hancock, Rocker, Geometry, Amulet, and finally, Tornado and her calf.

Tongs and calf

It was another wonderful day out on Stellwagen Bank!

Tasia, Naturalist and Photographer

Today was the best whale watch I have seen this season thus far!

Acrobatic calf breaches

We headed out towards the southwest corner of Stellwagen Bank on the Asteria and saw three humpback blows in the area.  We passed a single traveling humpback to go directly towards Tornado and her calf, who started flipper slapping, tail slashing, and rolling around at the surface.  The calf was being very playful right next to our boat and Tornado gave us wonderful close up views as they went right under our bow and fluking right next to the boat.  There were two humpbacks traveling together in a deliberate southeast direction and closely passed Tornado and her calf.  Tornado and her calf started milling and slowing down their behavior when I noticed a lot of commotion in the distance. About 4 miles north of us near mid-bank I could see at least 8 different blows with a lot of white water and numerous birds. This was a great indication of a lot of feeding activity!  We left Tornado and her calf to go investigate all the commotion.

Synchronized fluking

I was so excited to see that we found a highly productive area on Stellwagen Bank that seemed to attract 12-15 humpbacks, a couple of minke whales, and hundreds of gulls and shearwaters. We first stopped on a whale named Milkweed, born to Trident, with her calf by her side  Trident is a very popular whale on Stellwagen because she is one of our largest females in the population and had her first calf at only 5 years of age!  Milkweed and her calf came very close to our boat and were giving trumpet blows, an indication of pure excitement. The calf was rolling at the surface while Pleats came right over and started feeding next to Milkweed.

Feeding frenzy—humpbacks and seabirds both in on the action

About 300 yards away there was a large group of 6 whales feeding together, along with two pairs of humpbacks, and 2-3 singles in a 2 mile radius, making it a feeding frenzy!  The main group of whales were using shared bubble nets and consisted of Cajun, Geometry, Springboard, Daffodil, Vulture, and Eraser.  Vulture’s calf stayed about 50 yards away from all the feeding commotion and decided it was a good idea to start breaching!




We had simultaneous aerial activity from the calf including head breaches, full spinning head breaches, tail breaches, back breaches, and chin slaps, all while our large group was feeding open mouth!  It was overwhelming to decide which direction was the best place to look! Pepper was seen kick-feeding about ¼ mile away with another humpback, as well as Orbit. There were other humpbacks feeding in the area and one conducted lob-tails in the distance.  Milkweed, her calf, and Pleats followed into the area and Milkweed joined the large group to share some bubble clouds. I also think a couple of humpbacks snuck in on a few bubble nets and quickly split, making it difficult to ID them. There were about 6-8 whales moving in and out of this feeding group at a given time. All the humpbacks were diving so quickly to continue trapping the sand lance and there were 150-200 gulls and shearwaters following them to get their share of the meal. It was definitely a successful feeding frenzy out there today!

A nice look at the ventral pleats on a hungry humpback whale

Two feeding humpbacks. On one, you have a chance to see some expanded ventral pleats on it’s lower jaw. And with the other, you can see many of it’s baleen plates.

In total, we saw 3 mother calf pairs, 2-3 minke whales, and 12-15 humpback whales.  The only activity we didn’t see today was sleeping, and I think everyone was OK with that!

Just when I thought whale watches couldn’t get any better, the many calves out on Stellwagen Bank proved me wrong.

Open mouth feeding—look at all that baleen!

In addition to seeing dozens of whales open mouth feeding today, we had five calves that repeatedly breached throughout the entirety of our whale watch. It seems like Tornado’s calf started this trend during the first whale watch today. By the time we arrived on scene, the calves of Vulture, Milkweed, Glo-stick and Tongs had all picked up the behavior.

Group lunch—for gulls and humpbacks

Talk about a close-up

The young humpbacks breached, flipper-slapped and played while their mothers, Daffodil, Geometry and an unknown humpback (see photo below) fed on large groups of schooling fish. Calves often breach more frequently than adult whales and for longer periods of time as we saw today. Throughout the feeding season here at Stellwagen Bank, calves are very active at the surface of the water as they learn from their mothers what their growing bodies are capable of.

Frisky calf breaching

Today, we must have seen these calve perform over 100 breaches. This sort of behavior does not happen every day. I saw more breaches today than I have accumulatively on all my whale watches! It was an absolutely incredible experience!

Calf splash-down after its breach

As these calves were breaching, there were 4 to 6 groups of feeding humpbacks in the area. Throughout our whale watch, the mothers and their calves joined up with two other groups of humpbacks which included Jabiru, Yoo hoo and Pepper.

Another great look at the baleen (and competing gulls)

We also saw an enormous basking shark on our trip this afternoon! Basking sharks have modified structures in their gills called gill-rakers which function very much like baleen by filtering small marine animals out of the water. We estimated that this particular basking shark was an enormous 20 feet in length! Seeing this amazing whale-like shark was an additional treat on our very special whale watch today!

Unknown humpback's fluke

The star of this morning's trip on the Cetacea was Tornado’s calf, who treated us to almost non-stop breaches, flipper slaps, and tail lobs. It was a great addition fantastic bubble feeding and close to boat approaches. We sighted and identified 10 whales today and amazingly we didn’t have any unidentified whales today! We spotted four mother calf pairs: Vulture and calf, Tongs and calf, Milkweed and calf, and Tornado and calf. We also had great looks at Hancock and Geometry who was strangely the only male we saw today.

Calf breach

Calf tail lob

We started the trip with two fin whales but really wanted to find the feeding humpbacks so continued a little farther and started to see blows and big groups of birds. We started with a big group of Vulture, Tongs and their calves with Geometry doing so great bubble feeding with the adults lunging open mouthed through the bait balls while the calves waited at the surface.

Hancock and Tornado

Hancock also was doing some solo bubble feeding and was defecating quite a lot today. Seeing defecation is actually quite important and there are researchers who can learn a lot about animals from studies the hormones in poop. Today though we could tell Hancock has been eating quite a lot of fish based on the brown color of her poop.

It was a great day on the water with lots of activity and lots of whales.

— Tasia and Tegan

This morning on the 10am whale watch on board the Cetacea we headed out to the western edge of Stellwagen Bank for an amazing whale watch. As we approached the area we could see a line of blows as animals were feeding along the edge of the bank.

Glo-Stick and calf tail lob

There were probably 20-30 humpback whales in the area. The first group we found turned out to be a great look at Nile and Milkweed feeding together while their calves hung out at the surface. One of the calves even did a headstand under the water right next to the boat!

Basking shark

As all this was happening, I noticed something strange off the side of the boat, it was a basking shark! This shark is the second largest fish in the ocean and can reach lengths of 20-26 feet long. This was a great sighting of this animal coming right alongside the boat and it was actually my first basking shark sighting!

Bubble net feeding

We then moved on to a large group that was bubble feeding together. It was hard to identify every animal in the group as they didn’t seem to fluke very often; maybe they aren’t diving as deep to find fish. But this group seemed to be made up of Hancock, Geometry, Tongs and her calf, and a fourth whale which the only fluke photo of has a very inconsiderate sea gull obscuring the fluke! We stayed with this large group for some time and Tongs and the unknown whale left and Jabiru, Pepper and Daffodil joined up with Hancock and Geometry to engage in some more bubble feeding and great open mouth lunges!

Lunge!

Off the distance there was also a lot of activity going on with some great kick feeding from Glo-stick and Milkweed. As these females were feeding the calves were also mimicking this behavior and Glo-stick’s calf in particular was doing a lot of tail lobbing and even showed off some breaches (see pictures above)! We started to head home and came across a surprise bubble net which turned out to be Wizard and her calf.

Open mouth splash

This afternoon continued the amazing couple weeks we have had on the water! We have seen so much feeding activity on Stellwagen Bank and this afternoon was no exception. In fact, I don’t think I have ever seen so many whales in one place. I certainly have never identified so many individuals at one time in one place. We saw six mother and calf pairs alone including Milkweed, Nile, Tongs, Tornado, Glow-stick, Vulture and each of their calves! We also saw Pepper, Geometry, Daffodil, Samara, Hancock, Springboard, Aswan, Grackle and Osprey making a total of 21 different humpback individuals. There were even more humpbacks in the distance but we just couldn’t get to all of them!



We saw lots of bubble net feeding and a few whales kick feeding as well. These whales all fed in various temporary groups creating what we call associations. These associations lasted from 5 to 20 minutes as bonds were formed and broken throughout different feeding activities. Our intern Lindsey and I tried our very best to collect behavioral data accurately and keep track of all these groups as they played a sort of musical chairs.

Tongs and friend

It was incredibly exciting to see so many whales feeding in one place! We hope that our guests have been enjoying our amazing trips as much as we have!

— Tegan and Tasia

So luckily the seas calmed down this afternoon – and we certainly were rewarded! We traveled to the SW corner of Stellwagen to find 20-25 humpback whales scattered in groups bubble net feeding and kick feeding (which includes 4 mom-calf pairs), 4-6 fin whales, 1 minke whale, and a HUGE amount of gull activity!

If you're a humpback whale, the food is bountiful this time of year!

We started out getting looks of two traveling fin whales, and then found Nile and calf! It’s been great to see the most photographed whale of 2013 finally with her calf in tow, and the pair treated us to a nice look crossing our bow.

Nile and calf swimming

We left Nile and calf as Milkweed and her calf began approaching them to move on to the feeding frenzy in the distance. At any given time, there were about 2 to 3 spiral bubble nets scattered about, with tons of gulls swarming to each net, and also scattered kick-feeding humpbacks.

Bubble net bonanza

A few fin whales were traveling amongst the humpbacks. We ended up on a group of 5 humpbacks – Vulture and calf, Yoo Hoo (who followed closely alongside Vulture), Daffodil, and Grackle. These five repeatedly gave us amazing looks of large spiral nets, where Vulture would always come up first. We had to put our boat out of gear because they kept feeding closer to us – and at one point the group made a net right next to us!

You could call these front row seats

We were treated to a spectacular look as the group open-mouth alongside us – my favorite shot of the day is an up-close look of the barnacles & stovebolts on one of the whale’s chin as it came up feeding – I had to zoom out to get a shot of its ventral grooves.

Barnacles and stovebolts on this humpback's chinny-chin-chin

Just as we thought it couldn’t get any better, Glo-Stick and calf came by us to kick feed, and several other humpbacks were surrounding us feeding. Vulture’s calf also got very curious to the boat – swimming under our pulpits for several minutes!!

Glo-Stick kick feeding

We wrapped up the trip surrounding by 10 to15 humpbacks bubble and kick feeding in every direction —another spectacular day!

— Laura Howes