This morning on the 9am whale watch onboard the Cetacea our captain decided to mix things up a little and we headed more towards the south rather than to our usual spot on the northwest corner.

Dyad swims among fishing gear

A bird is dwarfed next to Dyad's fluke

We reached the western edge of the bank and found a female humpback whale named Dyad taking short dives. Dyad was doing an interesting diving behavior where she would take a long dive, surface once, fluke and then come up a few seconds later, spending a little while at the surface. Hopefully she was finding a lot of food on those long dives. Female whales must store huge amounts of fat to cope with the energetic strain of pregnancy and nursing. Dyad, like any of the females we see this summer, could be preparing to breed or give birth on the wintering grounds in the coming months. We’ll just have to wait and see!

Tongs and calf

Nearby to Dyad we spotted two whales, likely a mother and calf, logging or resting at the surface. We managed to get a quick look at the end of the trip and identified Tongs and her 2014 calf. Tongs and calf were actually some of the very first whales that I saw this season back in April and that calf has grown! We also got an awesome look at a Mola mola or ocean sunfish, the largest boney fish species, on the way home due to the perfect flat water conditions.

Mola mola!

This afternoon on the 1:30 whale watch we headed out to the western edge of the bank and found Tongs and her calf. We had seen these two whales resting in the same area earlier in the day but it looked like rest time was coming to an end. Tongs would take longish dives but also hang just under the water only visible by her pectoral fins glowing green through our phytoplankton laden water.

Tong's calf rolling

The calf was definitely feeling playful and we got a lot of tail slashes and bubble blowing. Our favorite was when the calf did a lot of rolling, especially when it spent some time swimming upside down with it’s belly exposed. This position allows us to get photographs which can help to identify sex. Otherwise we’d have to wait a few years and see if this whale turns up with a baby. It was a beautiful day and the flat water conditions made it a wonderful day for whale watching.

— Tegan

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Today on board the Asteria we headed out to the middle of Stellwagen Bank where we had many unique sightings. On our search for whales we spotted a loggerhead turtle! I had never seen a turtle on a whale watch so it was really exciting when we spotted this individual.

Blue shark!!

After this quick look, we spent some time with a lone female humpback named Dyad. Dyad was taking short 3 minute dives. While watching this whale, we had a surprise sighting of an awesome blue shark. It swam right alongside our starboard sight!

Tongs and her newest calf

After a while, we decided to move to a different area where other whales had been sighted earlier in the day. On our way to this new area, we spotted a giant mola mola or ocean sunfish! We finished up our trip with Tongs and her 2014 calf travelling very slowly at the surface. The calf stayed at the surface the entire time we watched this pair, while the mother took short, non-fluking dives every few minutes. It was a beautiful, flat-calm day with so many different species!!!


— Annie G.

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Large finback, twice the length of a humpback!

On the 12pm whale watch aboard the Aurora today, Captain Jeff headed straight to the northwest corner of Stellwagen Bank. When we first arrived – we found two different species! A large fin whale, and two familiar humpbacks – Northstar and Hippocampus. Though the fin whale was far, we could really see the difference in size- the fin whale is about twice the length of the humpback whales.
 

Blowholes

We spent our trip with Northstar and Hippocampus, who were traveling slowly at first. Then after a few surfacings, Hippocampus did a flipper flare underwater, Northstar trumpeted (i.e. made a loud-pitched exhalation), and then Hippocampus suddenly dove very deep.

Hippocampus and Northstar

This seemed to begin to prompt some different behaviors, because shortly after Hippocampus began flipper slapping at the surface! We watch this whale slap several times at the surface, and Northstar at one point rolled on his side and exposed one of his flippers (but didn’t slap – you can see it in the photo).

Hippocampus comes in close for a close-up

After that the pair began some subsurface feed, and near the end of the trip we began to see small ripples of bubbles popping up at the surface while the whales remained below. It was exciting to slowly see the anticipation building as a faint bubble net appeared near our boat, and then suddenly the two surfaced right next to us!

Northstar fluke

It wasn’t clear as to whether the whales were curious to the boat/our jet wash, or just happening to feed under our boat – but either way it was a great way to end our trip! Capt. Jeff even squeezed in a little more time for a few extra last looks of this exciting behavior.

Another great day on the water!

— Laura

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

On the Cetacea, we headed back to mid-bank to find a whole bunch of activity. When we arrived, we found scattered blows of several humpbacks, including splashes from kick-feeding and tons of gulls swarming around the bubble clouds in the distance. We estimated about 10 to 12 whales around in total.

Whale feeding frenzy

Pepper and Tongs

We first spotted humpbacks Pepper and Yoo Hoo bubble feeding in the distance (Pepper lunged open-mouthed at the surface a few times), who quickly joined up a bit with Tongs and her 2014 calf to continue to feed. It was great to see so much bait around and bird activity!

Pleats fluke

After that the whales started to spread out a bit. We spent more time with Tongs and calf (the calf even rolled a bit!) and also one of our crew members spotted a full breach of humpback Pleats (Ventisca’s 2008 calf).

Springboard kick feeding

We wrapped up our trip moving to another scattered group of Springboard, Milkweed and calf, and a few other individuals. We observed even more kickfeeding, a large bubble cloud of 3 feeding humpbacks (see photo of feeding frenzy at top), and wrapped up the trip with Milkweed’s calf lobtailing. We got a great look of the calf’s milky-fluke, which will become a more permanent pattern by the time it is about 2 years old.

Milkweed calf tail lob

Another great day on Stellwagen!

— Laura Howes