9 am and 2 pm Whale Watches - Michael
We had a great whale watch today down the backside of the Cape. While it took us a little longer to get to our target destination, the sightings paid off! We caught glimpses of approximately 20 active humpback whales and several minke whales as well. As we traveled around the Cape we also saw several bird species including: Wilson’s Storm Petrels, Sooty Shearwaters, Cory’s Shearwaters, Greater Shearwaters, and Manx Shearwaters.
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| Salt! |
Our trip started off with sightings of humpbacks named Springboard, Duckpin, Ventisca, and even SALT! Salt is arguably the most famous humpback whale there is. She was the first humpback to receive a name (based off of the salt-crusted appearance of her dorsal fin) and since the humpback research began we have seen her with a total of 12 calves!
We then got additional looks at Perseid, Crown, and a few other individuals before ending our trip with a group of 5 whales feeding at the surface. It was a treat to see bubble-net feeding in action! After looking through our photos, we discovered the following whales were members of this group: Rune, Bandit, Pogo, Stub, and Fracture. This group gave us a fantastic last sighting to end our trip!
Here is a short video from this afternoon's trip. This video is of Rune, a female humpback whale that was feeding right next to the boat. Rune was using her fluke to kicking feed and then dove under the school of fish blowing bubbles to create a bubble net. What a show!
Here is a longer video that includes additional footage from this afternoon's trip. Got to love that kick feeding!
For our afternoon trip, we elected to return to the backside of the Cape since we had had such great luck in the morning trip. Once again we were not disappointed as we got to see approximately 10 minke whales, 20 humpback whales, and even 2 gray seals.
Our first close-up looks of the trip were of Nimbus and her calf. While Nimbus kept busy feeding, the calf gave us a fantastic close approach and traveled next to our boat for several minutes.
We also saw a humpback named Rune do some spectacular kick-feeding close by. Kick-feeding is a technique where humpbacks will lift their powerful tail flukes out of the water and then bring them crashing down on the surface to stun any small fish in the area. After the fish are stunned the whale then turns and takes a large gulp of water from the stunned area before straining it through the baleen so that only the fish remain.
The majority of our remaining sightings were of groups of 4 to 5 humpbacks working together the bubble-net feeding. The list of individual humpbacks seen during the trip includes: Nimbus and calf, Rune, Salt, Abrasion, Entropy, Centipede, Bandit, Pogo, Pharos, and Fracture.
