Mon Aug 6

Sunday August 5, 2018
Finback whales and Minke whales

We headed out to check for whales where we’d been seeing them for the past few weeks. It was wonderful to get offshore and away from the heat, and even more wonderful when we found our first of 5 finback whales and 3 minke whales. We found the whales feeding on sand eels near the sea floor and as the sand eels rose in the water column to great densities we found more whales.  Ultimately 3 singleton fin whales (40, 60, and 75 feet long, respectively) and one mom/calf pair.  Intersperse among these larger baleen whales we found 3 minke whales. We headed back in to search for dolphins that were seen earlier but they were not found.  All-in-all a great trip!

Totals
5 finback whales (including 1 mom/calf pair)
2 minke whales

Bird Count via Arie Gilbert
16 Cory’s Shearwater
27 Great Shearwater
1 Sooty Shearwater
12 Double-crested Cormorant
2 Parasitic Jaeger
11 Laughing Gull
42 Herring Gull
25 Great Black-backed Gull
7 Least Tern
122 Common Tern
5 Royal Tern
1 Fish Crow