Watching Whales

When my parents visited last September, they went whale watching in Boston. Well, they were supposed to go whale watching but no whales showed up to be watched so they got two rain check tickets for another trip. They donated the tickets to us and we got round to using them this memorial day weekend.

After a delicious Italian dinner in the North End of Boston on Friday night (better than the place we went to last time) we headed out on the boat Saturday morning. It was a little cold, cloudy and windy and although the waves weren't big, the wind was rocking the boat a lot. I was fine but the crew were handing out sick bags! We got out to Stellwagen Bank in about an hour and took our position on the front of the boat. It wasn't super packed so we had a good view.

We didn't have to wait long to see some whale blows on the horizon and in no time we were surrounded by humpback whales. Sometimes it was hard to even know where to look as the were surfacing all around, open mouth feeding and one even jumped all the way out of the water (no picture of that I'm afraid). There were at least 20-25 individual whales out there and we spent an hour just watching them and taking far too many pictures!

The crew said this week had been one of the best weeks ever for seeing whales so we got really lucky and I was probably a little over excited - it was pretty amazing as they were right by the boat and you could really see how big they were. I won't show you all the photos but here are a few of my favorites!

Body and fluke

So many whale tails to photo!

Open mouth feeding for whales and birds

Two whales open mouth feeding

One eating and one diving

Double whale tail action

Captain Matthew!