On my last day of viewing Puffins in Maine, I went out with Bar Harbor Whale Watch to view both Puffins and cetaceans. We saw plenty of Atlantic Puffins, Common Murres, Razorbills, and Terns on Petit Manan Island before heading out to sea to find cetaceans.

Along the way we saw plenty of Wilson’s Storm-petrels, Great Shearwaters, and Red-necked Phalaropes. About an hour after we left Petit Manan Island, we encountered a large pod of Atlantic White-sided Dolphins, a first for me! I had only seen Pacific White-sided Dolphins before so this was very exciting.

They gave us fantastic looks before we moved on to find more whales. After about an hour and a half of open water, we ended up in a spot where we saw roughly 5-6 Humpback Whales that were all around the boat.

Only 2 gave us great looks at their flukes to help ID them, but they were whales that the tour company had seen before. They were ID’ed as NA-0896 “Nine” and NA-0568 “Owl” I believe.

One of them even surfaced right next to the bow of the boat. While not my first Humpback Whale encounter, it was just as amazing as all the ones in the past! -Patrick