Sun July 13 – Whale Watching

Oh, what a trip we had- 5 species of cetaceans!! Our 2025 season is getting better and better. Today’s trip initially brought us to a small group of ~20 Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins. Quickly we began to find more groups, , and ultimately a massive aggregation of 300 individuals. We stayed with them for a while and then headed further offshore and found a zone with finback whales and their characteristic 20’ tall inverted coned-shaped blows. The water column was loaded with sand eels and the surface loaded with pelagic birds. We were able to get ID photos from about 6-8 finbacks, although we could see blows in every direction for a few miles.  After a while we decided to check out the humpbacks in the same area. Celebration, Loon, and a few others to be ID’d were there. Celebration regularly kick-feeding, the others sometimes bubble mist feeding, and occasionally open-mouth feeding.  Throughout this area we occasionally saw several minkes whales as well.

300 Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins

6-8 Finback whales

4-5 Humpback whales

3 Minke whales

40-60 Short-beaked common dolphins

Hundreds of Great, Cory’s shearwaters

2 Wilson’s storm petrels

Photos and videos will be posted soon!!