On our first trip of the day we had fog relatively high off the water and pretty good sea conditions. We had reports of whales northwest of the shipping lane, so we headed that way. We found two humpbacks there in 80 feet of water. We saw some fluke dives from these animals, who stayed close to each other the whole time they were feeding. At one point one of them did a full body roll. They appeared to be pushing the fish in between them.
Over the course of the trip the whales moved over a mile west. There were fishing boats around us, as well as lots of birds and porpoises. We also saw some more spouts in the distance.
On our next trip we found whales in the same spot. There were still lots of fishing boats in the area. Sea conditions had improved from the morning trip. We found six humpback whales in this area, all feeding in 84 feet of water. We saw some fluke dives from these animals as well. Some large ships passed by us while we observed the whales. We stayed with them for about 40 minutes. We also spotted some common murre fathers with their chicks.
By our afternoon trip the conditions were beautiful. It was sunny and glassy calm out in the shipping lane, where we first found one humpback whale close to our boat. Additional spouts were off in the distance. The first whale spouted 150 yards from us. We stopped the boat, floated in neutral and were surprised to see the whale pop up 10 yards from the boat and fluke dive. The whale surfaced again farther from the boat, just as a ship was passing.
After that whale was 300 yards away from us, we continued out towards a group of 3-4 humpbacks that were near the pilot boat. These whales were surfacing in synchrony. There were lots of birds hovering around them, indicating that they were feeding. We saw several lunge feeds from these animals. The highlight was a quadruple lunge feed where all four whales came up at once. We got lots of fluke dives from these animals, but none of them are currently in our catalog.
The whales were slowly moving west. We were able to spend about 45 minutes with them before we had to head back to the dock.
-Allison
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