What I'm seeing out there

I've been on the whale watch for week or two now. Each trip has been great -- one nice thing about being a marine bio geek in New England is that the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary is one of the best spots in the world to see whales. That's where just about every whale watch in the area heads to. Here's what I've seen so far:

Lots of whales. Probably ten a trip, on average. Mostly humpbacks, a good number of finbacks, and plenty of minkes. Humpbacks are basically what whale watches here look for, since they're big, very active at the surface, and kind of showy at times. They're the most likely to breach (jump out of the water), flipper slap, spyhop, and so on, and a lot of their feeding strategies look cool too -- we had one yesterday that was feeding by lunging straight up through a school of prey fish, and its momentum took it about a third of the way out of the water. Fortunately, they're also the most commonly-seen whale around here. Minkes are tiny (only about 25 feet) and don't spend much time at the surface, so they're not much to look at. Fin whales can be hit or miss: if they're traveling, they might take a breath at the surface near you, and come up again over your horizon; or they might make sideway lunges along the surface while feeding, showing off their odd color patterns. But they're gigantic, nearly 80 feet long, so I'm always happy to see them.

I haven't seen any big fish like sharks or tuna yet, or any turtles. Plenty of greater shearwaters, herring and black-backed gulls, and Wilson's storm petrels -- but I haven't seen the petrels feeding yet, which they do by holding out their wings and stepping lightly across the water surface, looking for food. I caught a glimpse of a seal in the harbor, and we've seen a few white-sided dolphins as well.