Hello everyone, what a great day we had today!!

On our 10 am departure we headed right offshore, it was such a beautiful day to go searching, and we are glad we did, we found our first fin whale of the season!  Fin whales are the second largest whale in the world and can reach lengths of more than 80 feet and weigh more than 80 tonnes!  We also had a minke whale offshore.

You can just make out the lower right, white jaw of the finback here under the water

We stopped at Whitehorse Island on the way home, always a great place to see nesting seabirds.

A black-legged kittiwake had something to say

This is Whitehorse Island

On our afternoon trip Matt took us again offshore to see if maybe we could relocate that fin whale but on our way out we spotted a minke whale and we stopped and were we ever happy we did.  The minke whale took some serious interest in the Quoddy Link and spent around 30 minutes with us, circling the boat and surfacing so close.  In the pics below you can clearly see the white patches on the pectoral flippers, affectionately known as “minke mittens”.

A typical surface from a minke whale, the rostrum comes right out

Look at those minke mittens

In the offshore area there were so many puffins, there were more puffins than any other bird out there.  CRAZY….in my 11 years with Quoddy I have never seen puffins like that out here.

And to make the trip even better we found 3 more minke whales and then we found a basking shark!  Basking sharks are the second largest fish in the world and are filter feeders, feeding on plankton using their gill rakers.

Basking shark

And of course, on both trips we stopped with seals.

This little harbour seal was so sweet

I love female grey seals

Thanks so much for checking in today!

Cheers,
Danielle