SIGHTINGS UPDATE
Tuesday July 21, 2020
10am: This morning we started with seals on Black Ledge and an adult bald eagle showed up to have some fishy breakfast on the metal navigational marker. We had a minke whale right away and watched it for a few series but it was moving around a lot and diving for a while so we moved off to see what else we could find. We got a message that there was a NORTH ATLANTIC RIGHT WHALE so we went to investigate and oh my gosh are we glad we did! We had lots of amazing looks at this young right whale! There were minkes and porpoise swimming around as well.
1:30pm: This afternoon we headed down Western Passage (between the coast of Maine and Deer Island, NB) to Head Harbour Passage. We passed some seals and porpoise and got to see the town of Eastport, Maine. We picked up the same small North Atlantic right whale from this morning hanging out in a Cove on Campobello Island. We saw a couple dives but didn’t want to “add to the fleet” (there were a lot of small, private boats in the area) so we wandered off and got some great looks at a few minke whales, porpoise, and some Bonaparte’s gulls. We stopped with seals on Black Ledge and a bald eagle on Pendleton island on the way back to St Andrews.
5pm: This evening we started out with a minke whale right away then it disappeared. We searched for a bit and eventually picked up a couple of other minkes. We viewed Head Harbour Lighthouse, saw porpoise and an adult and juvenile bald eagle. We visited Whitehorse Island and stopped with seals at Black Ledge on the way back to St Andrews. It was warm all day on the Bay. What a wonderful day!
Any right whale sighting is incredibly rare and is not a species we would advertise as a regular sighting out of St. Andrews.
North Atlantic right whale (2019 calf of #2791)
distinct V-shaped blow of a North Atlantic right whale (2019 calf of #2791)
North Atlantic right whale (2019 calf of #2791)
North Atlantic right whale (2019 calf of #2791) off Casco Bay Island
North Atlantic right whale (2019 calf of #2791) with the Oceana Riviera in the back (the cruise ship is laying in harbour at Eastport, ME with only crew aboard that can not leave the ship)
North Atlantic right whale (2019 calf of #2791)
adult bald eagle on Whitehorse Island
male eider duck
minke whale
adult eagle on a navigational marker
THANK YOU to Rika for the content updates throughout the day (and all of the images) and THANK YOU to all of our passengers who joined us today. To see a critically endangered North Atlantic right whale is something very special, with ~400 left in the world it’s not a species many get to see and if we don’t protect them now their future is in jeopardy.
Cheers,
Danielle
Quoddy Link Marine
Whale Watching
St. Andrews
New Brunswick
