Hello all, it’s Danielle with Quoddy Link Marine back from another gorgeous day on the water. With calm seas and clear skies we ventured offshore on both our 10:00 am and 2:00 pm departures in search of humpback and finback whales and we were not to be disappointed. With at least 4 finbacks on both trips these large and extremely powerful whales were a treat to watch. Even though finback whales are the second largest animal in the world most passengers would still like to see a tail when they come whale watching and when the weather is good and we can go looking we will try and look for the tail! (finbacks do not raise their tail when they dive, they are very flexible and have no need to raise their flukes). Below is a photo of Cork, a 5 year old female humpback we saw on both trips today. Humpback whales will typically raise their flukes on a terminal dive, usually to the cheers of our guests. On our morning departure we also had a very unique sighting of a school of blue fin tuna feeding on herring! They were surrounded by sooty shearwaters feeding on the fish that was being tightly grouped by the large and powerful tuna. It was really awesome to see!

It was a busy day today (holiday weekend) and with some extra tourists in town we had an extra departure at 2:30 pm today on the Island Link, our Power Cruiser. On their way back in after spending some time with finback whales as they were making their way through the inner islands they spotted a humpback whale! Usually to see humpbacks from St. Andrews you have to travel a good 16 miles so the sighting was certainly a surprise. At initial glance it was assumed to be Hobo, a humpback we have been seeing around lately but as Melanie (naturalist) and Matt (captain) got a better look they found a young, ~20 foot humpback whale they did not recognize. “She” never raised her tail but below is a photograph of her dorsal fin taken by Melanie. I’ll be sending the photo around to see if I can get some more information.

Thanks everyone for checking in. Below is a photo of Cork taken on our 10:00 am trip. Keep checking in for more updates from Quoddy Link Marine.