Whales – Page 3 – Whale Tales

Rare Encounter with North Atlantic Right Whales – 26/5/24

So in May, right before Memorial Day, I was out on a sailing trip with Apparent Winds Research, an education charter sailboat. We were out on the Hudson Canyon for a few days and we were looking for sperm whales for a filming project. We did not find any sperm whales, but so we had a spout in the distance and it was our first spout. And, in the past, when I’ve been on the canyon, we’ve been able to find sperm whales. And that’s kind of the species I was expecting to see off the shelf break where we were. And so I thought that’s what the spout was. And so we get a better look. There’s no dorsal fin. I was like, okay, well, that’s a sperm whale. And then. And then it wasn’t. I pull up my binoculars and we have a right whale, like, speeding, like he is hauling across the horizon, offshore of us. And so I’m like, okay, well, we’re not, that’s crazy. He was too far to get a photo, but, like, that was cool. No one’s gonna believe us. And so we keep going. We, we move inshore, right up to the mouth of the canyon. I say inshore. We’re still like a hundred miles southeast of New York City. • And then this fog starts to set in. But just like, you know, half a mile away at the edge of this fog, we see two whales come up and blow. And it’s two right whales. And then, engines off and then like all around us in this fog, like, you know, just as far as we can see, it’s just right whales come up. And so we ended up having six or seven right whales, around us right here, right at the edge of the Hudson Canyon. And so this was a few days before Memorial Day. And if, you know, the Hudson Canyon Memorial Day weekend is insane. It’s a parking lot of boats, so we were like, we need to make sure that people know about this. We weren’t going to be on shore for another few days. So we used the sat. We used Starlink or whatever to get a report to Danielle, and she sent it to all the people. And Noah sent out an aerial flight a few days later. And over the course of the next week, they found 45 right whales on the Hudson Canyon. They do they not expect to see right whales on the canyon for any real duration over the course of the summer. For most of the summer, they had 80, 82 different right whales right on the mid Atlantic canyon. There were a few sporadic sightings before us from research vessels, but as far as I know, we were the first substantial, like, group observation of right whales here in the mid Atlantic. That led to that bigger feeding group, discovery here, which is super crazy. And it’s a big data set for that. That just gives them more questions to try to answer this summer to see if it’ll happen again. -Chris This post was adapted from a voice recording in episode 80 of the Whale Tales Podcast, listen here.

Humpback Mugging

in Humpback, Jersey Shore Whale Watching, Storytellers, Whales

I have so many, it was tough to pick, just one. But there was an encounter with a pair of humpback whales a few years ago. So in addition to being the director of research for Gotham Whale, I also work as a naturalist on • Jersey Shore Whale Watch. And one day we had a random trip in the middle of the week. And it was a high school, it was only a two hour, which is a shorter trip. And you know, high school kids, they’re just happy to be out of school, right? But little did they know, they would probably have this life changing experience with these two humpback whales. We came across them and they approached us, which does not happen all the time. It does happen, but it’s not often that they are watching you versus you watching them. And they decided to interact with the boat for about two hours. These two whales, they essentially rubbed their rostrums on the hull of the boat and were rolling upside down looking at these students that were looking over the side and could not believe what they were seeing. Basically were giving us all of these behaviors that we hadn’t seen for the entire year. And I know these things happen more often elsewhere, right. But for us, it was amazing to see them spy hopping next to the boat, looking at us. To see them lifting their flipper, practically touching these students. And to see them move away and then purposely turn around and come back while we were sitting there in complete neutral and watching these whales. It really was just one of the most incredible experiences. Them spouting on us and, you know, and me being able to actually show them parts of their anatomy up close, which was so cool. And then trying to explain to these students that this does not happen all the time. This is not normal. This is a very unique, very special experience. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that. -Danielle This post was adapted from a voice recording in episode 80 of the Whale Tales Podcast, listen here.

An Incredible First Trip to BC -10/23

in Bigg’s (Transient), Dolphins, Harbour Porpoise, Humpback, Killer Whale, Porpoises, Whales

I was out with Ocean Ecoventures, with the wonderful Gary Sutton, on a tour where we went up into the Gulf Islands. After encountering several Bigg’s killer whale groups in the Strait of Georgia, as we were heading back towards Cowichan Bay, before coming back to the Gulf Islands, we were just off the pass…

The Sun – 11/23

in Dolphins, Humpback, Killer Whale, Krisztina, Norwegian, Storytellers, Whales

We have almost two weeks before the Polar Night will settle on the Norwegian Arctic. One can always enjoy watching orcas in direct sunlight, even in freezing cold weather. Today, the temperature was -7 degrees. There must be a volume of herring nearby Skjervøy as we encountered animals in the morning, just minutes after leaving…

Humpback Calf Baleen – 19/11/24

in Humpback, Storytellers, Whale Watch Western Australia, Whales

Humpback calf baleen was on show this afternoon while two mature bachelor males cruised towards the departure lounge of the sighting grounds in the morning. Calm and peaceful moments this morning as we spent the start of our day with a bachelor pod of two males. While with the boys we observed four other pods…