Sightings & News

September 21, 2009

The weather has kept us in port more than we would like lately, but the whales have been great when we have been out.  We continue to see lots of Fin whales, many of them continuing to feed on the small Herring that have made Jeffreys Ledge come alive this summer.  We've also been seeing Humpbacks, and a ton of Atlantic White Sided Dolphin as well.  This season continues to be one of the best that we have had in terms of whale sightings in quite some time!  Come join us for some wonderful fall whale watching!

September 6, 2009

We had another great week of whale watching, with the added bonus of sunshine, unlimited visibility, and calm seas! On our trips this week we had very high numbers of Fin whales (at least 10-20 per trip), and got to witness many of them feeding. This is great news for our passengers, as it means lots of whales to look at, and great news for the whales as well, because it means there's lots of food! We also had several different humpbacks this week, with many of them also exhibiting different feeding behaviors. Atlantic White-Sided Dolphins were seen on a few of our trips, and one day we saw three different pods on one trip! We've been noticing a lot of jellyfish in the water lately, and sure enough, we found an Ocean Sunfish, or Mola Mola, just outside the harbor two days in a row! They are the largest bony fish in the world, and weigh about a ton. Jellyfish are their main food source, and anyone who's been lucky enough to see one of these very unique looking fish will not soon forget it. In addition to these species, we also saw Minke whales, Bluefin tuna, Harbor seals, and many species of pelagic birds this week. It's amazing to be in an area with the opportunity to see so many different types of animals; every day is truly a new adventure!

August 30, 2009

It continues to be a fantastic season of whale watching! Since the last update, we're still having high numbers of sightings on every trip, and we've had a great variety of species as well. In addition to Humpback, Fin, and Minke whales, we've seen Atlantic White-sided Dolphins, Harbor seals, Harbor porpoise, Bluefin tuna, and Blue sharks! The pelagic birds also continue to be around in incredibly high numbers, and we've been happy to have so many wonderful birders on board with us! The arrival of fall doesn't mean the exit of whales; they will be in the area until November or December, and some species live in the North Atlantic year round. We hope to see you soon!

August 17, 2009

Here at the harbor, we have a board that lists our recent sightings from the past few days. As an illustration of just how good the whale watching has been lately, here's the list of what we had over the weekend, for everyone else to see!

Sat. Aug. 15: 25 Humpbacks, lots of bubble cloud and open mouth feeding, flipper slapping, breaching, etc. 150 Atlantic White-Sided Dolphins. 12 Fin whales. 2 Minke whales. 10 Harbor porpoise.

Sun. Aug. 16: 31 Humpbacks, lots of bubble cloud and open mouth feeding, flipper slapping, breaching, etc. 40 Atlantic White-Sided Dolphins. 10 Fin whales. 11 Minke whales. 1 Harbor seal.

Wow!!

August 15, 2009

Well, it's the broken record routine again, it seems like every day the whale watching gets better and better! There continues to be large amounts of bait out on Jeffreys Ledge, and as a result, there continues to be incredible amounts of marine life in the area. Not just whales, but we've seen several pods of Atlantic White-Sided Dolphins this week, and the pelagic bird show remains the best it's probably ever been. New whales show up in the area every day, and we've seen quite a few Humpbacks that none of us have ever seen before on Jeffreys Ledge (and some of us have been doing this for decades!) Some of these whales were seen earlier this summer down on Stellwagon Bank, but have decided to join the feeding frenzy up here instead! We've been lucky enough to witness a lot of behaviors that we don't often get to see; besides the impressive feeding activity, we've been treated to breaching, tail lobbing, and flipper slapping often in the last few days. Every trip is a new adventure, and while we never know what we'll see when we leave the dock every day, we encourage anyone who's ever thought about going whale watching to join us soon...your chances of having a great trip are about as good as they get!

August 9, 2009

The whale watching continues to be excellent!  I feel like a broken record writing these reports, but things out on Jeffreys Ledge have been consistently amazing!  The whales continue to feed voraciously on the ledge, and we've also been seeing some of the more rare behaviors like breaching, flipper slapping, and tail lobbing.  The highlight of the last few days was seeing some of our favorite whales return to the area, Clipper and Newton.  Clipper returned this year with a very large and playful calf who has already been the highlight of a couple of trips.  The weather continues to be gorgeous, hope you can join us!!

August 1, 2009

Things are still great out on Jeffreys Ledge with lots of feeding, and new whales showing up all the time.  Over the last two days we have sighted Upsilon and Trident for the first time this year.  The whales continue to feed intensely with lots of bubble clouds and lunge feeding.  Sighted in the last couple of days have been Chromosome, Fan, Filament, Milky Way, Mudskipper, Quote, Scylla, Solas, Tigris, Trident, Tripod, Upsillon and Valley as well as Fjord, one of our favorite fin whales!

July 28, 2009

We have been having some great trips out on Jeffreys Ledge lately.  We continue to see lots of surface feeding behaviors from both Humpback and Fin whales.  A few old friends have returned to Jeffreys after long absences.  Freckles (last seen in 2003) and Milky Way (last seen in 1996) both returned to feed yesterday.  We had over a dozen Humpbacks, lots of Fin whales, Minkes and even some Atlantic White Sided Dolphins over the last couple of days!

July 19, 2009

The whale watching has continued to be great over the last week.  We have sighted our Humpback friends Hornbill, Flask, Mudskipper, Quote, Valley, Tripod, Chromosome, Scylla, Tornado, Flask, Satula, Polaris, and Boomerang.  We also sighted Prong, a female Fin whale who was first seen with her calf in the summer of 2000.  There have also been numerous other feeding Fin whales around as well as some Dolphins and lots of Minke whales.

July 13, 2009

Great whale watching over the last couple days with lots of feeding and some active whales.  We have been seeing both Humpbacks and Fin whales engaging in some intense feeding behaviors much closer to Rye Harbor than usually, some only 8 miles away!  Among this group of whales are Fjord the Fin whale, as well as Quote, Flask, and Mudskipper- all Humpback whales.

Today we definitely had two great trips on Jeffreys Ledge, the highlight on both trips being Valley and Tornado, who decided that they were going to get a little active.  On the morning trip we were just leaving to return to Rye when they both breached simultaneously right next to boat!  On the afternoon trip we found the pair again, when Tornado began breaching in the distance.  The pair then continued to breach, flipper slap, and tail lob for almost ten minutes straight.  There were also a half dozen other Humpbacks, some Fin whales, and Atlantic White Sided Dolphin sighted yesterday.

July 6, 2009

The whale watching has been awesome on Jeffreys Ledge the last few days.  An abundance of bait fish has settled in, resulting in some pretty cool feeding behaviors.  Over the last few days we have seen Fin whales and Minke whales lunge feeding at the surface, and a lot of open mouth and bubble feeding from the Humpback whales.  Every day it seems like a few more whales move into the area.  Today we spent the morning on a southern part of the ledge and had a bunch of whales, then moved up to a central part of the ledge in the afternoon and had even more whales!  It was a real feeding frenzy this afternoon with 6+ Humpbacks bubble feeding on Herring.  We identified Valley, Tigris, and Tripod among the group this afternoon.  This morning we identified Fin whale 9724 as well as Hornbill and Sedge.  Yesterday we also sighted our first Atlantic White Sided Dolphin of the year, which was a real treat for everyone onboard.

The bird watching has been excellent as well.  Over the last few days we have sighted three species of Jaeger, four species of Shearwaters, a Puffin, and lots of Storm Petrels and Gannets.

We can't wait to get out there tomorrow....hope you can join us!

June 14, 2009

It has been an encouraging couple of days out on Jeffreys Ledge.  We have begun to sight some of the whales that were brand new to the area last year, but have returned again with new names!  On Friday we headed out in the rain with a hearty school group on board and were treated to some great sightings.  We spotted two Humpbacks whales "Trough," who was known as 0810 last year, and "Literal," who is formerly known as 0802.  When a new whale is sighted, the Blue Ocean Society assigns it a number until it can be formally named.  The first two numbers represent the year the whale was first sighted and the second two represent the order it was sighted in.  So, 0802 was the second new whale sighted in 2008 and 0810 was the tenth.

Saturday we headed out again and ended up in a different area of the ledge than where we had great sightings on Friday, and found even more activity.  We were surprised to find a couple of frequent visitors to Jeffreys, two Humpbacks named Gondolier and Flask- one of our favorites!  There was also a Fin Whale and a couple of Minke whales in the area.  The rain is supposed to clear out in time for our whale watch today, so we hope to see you out there!

May 30, 2009

We have had a generally great start to our season.  While we are still doing school field trips during the week, we have been whale watching on the weekends.  Our first weekend was pretty good overall.  Saturday we were treated to our friend from last season, Komodo, doing lots of open mouth feeding and a little bit of lunge feeding.  We also has close to half a dozen Fin whales clustered in one area.  Things seemed to clear out of the area a bit on Sunday, however the visibility was a bit difficult.  We did manage to find 6-7 Minke whales however.  On Memorial Day we had an all day bird watching charter, but the whales were definitely the highlight!  We found a group of four Humpbacks, and one of them named Patchwork became curious about the boat and spent a good 20 minutes just rolling over next to and underneath us.  We also saw Gondolier, who breached several times as we approached, as well as several Fin whales and a bunch of Minkes.

Today we headed out with encouraging reports from fishing boats and had a very good day.  We started inshore with a couple of very cooperative Minkes.  We then located a mother and calf Humpback whale pair, our first of the year!  The calf was quite playful, and when she wasn't nursing from mom she was flipper slapping, rolling over, and tail breaching.  After that awesome sighting, we moved a little further offshore and located our first basking shark of the season, and got some really great looks at it!  We then ended the trip looking at a couple of very cooperative Fin Whales.

April 11, 2009

Our first whale watch is just over a month away, and we can't wait to get back out there!  Reports from fishing boats are very encouraging with lots of Humpback, Finback, and Right Whales around Jeffreys Ledge.  We've been hard at work in the boat yard getting the Granite State ready for another season of whale watching, our 29th as a company!  The 2009 schedule is posted, hope to see you this season.  Please call or e-mail us for reservations.

March 20, 2009

Check out the videos below from ABC news in Charlston, SC to see what our crew members Jonathan and Melanie have been up to this winter researching Right Whales in their southern breeding grounds.  This work is vital to the research of Right Whales and their new calves, as well as protecting them on a day to day basis by alerting ships to whales presence.

Video 1    Video 2

January 10, 2009

Happy New Year!  What a great year of whale watching! To summarize the season that was, here are a few facts: We traveled to Jeffreys Ledge in search of whales 151 times last season, and sighted whales on all but 3 trips. We sighted 453 Humpbacks, 458 Fin Whales, 217 Minke Whales, 15 extremely rare North Atlantic Right Whales, and 17 Sei Whales (thanks to our friends at the Blue Ocean Society for those numbers.) We were also lucky enough to sight lots of Pilot Whales, White Sided Dolphins, Harbor porpoise, seals, Basking Sharks, Blue Sharks, and Ocean Sunfish.  The Granite State traveled over 8000 miles, far enough to travel across the Atlantic and back! Most importantly, we got to meet a lot of wonderful people, and were able to help them to experience these amazing creatures in their natural environment.

Thank you to our crew for all of their hard work, and to everyone that joined us to help make 2008 one of our best seasons yet!

October 8, 2008

The fall has continued to provide excellent whale watching on Jeffreys Ledge.  Sunday was one of our better trips of the season, with seven species of marine mammal sighted!  We started the trip off with a few Harbor seals around the Isles of Shoals, then passed by several pods of Harbor porpoise on our way out to the ledge.  Just inside of Jeffreys we stopped to take a look at a Sei Whale and after several great looks at it, to our surprise a mother and calf Right Whale appeared.  This mother was identified as Right whale #1321.  Her calf was one of only 20 to be born over the winter.  After this rare treat we moved onto Jeffreys where we sighted three species of whales in one small area.  There was a Minke whale and a Fin whale, as well as 5+ Humpback whales.  The five we were able to identify were Venom, Mantis, Flask, Quote and Quote's 2008 calf.  It's too bad that this is our last week of whale watching, as the sightings are so great!!

September 22, 2008

What a great weekend on the water!  We were treated to our most diverse group of sightings so far this season.  Saturday, we started with several cooperative Minke whales, got some great looks at a few Fin whales, and then finished the day off with a new Humpback sighting for us, Filament's 07 calf.  Filament's calf was very cooperative giving us some great looks at some interesting feeding behavior.

Sunday was definitely one of our favorite days of the season so far!  Much like Saturday, we started off wit cooperative Minke and Fin whales, then moved on to a very exciting sighting of four North Atlantic Right Whales.  These whales are extremely rare, in fact, four of them represents over 1% of the population of the entire species!!  One of these whales was fairly active, rolling over at the surface several times.  We even sighted a couple of Sei whales and a Fin whale in amongst the right whales.  What a day!!

September 16, 2008

Our recent whale watches have continued to be excellent!  While the weather has kept us tied up a little more than it usually does, but when we have been out to the ledge the Fin whales have still been excellent.  There have also been a ton of dolphins out on the ledge, we have seen them on all but one of our last dozen trips!  We keep hearing rumors from some offshore fishing boats of a few Humpbacks and even a Right whale being sighted on the ledge, but it has always been on days when we haven't had a trip.

Please note that we are sold out with a private charter this Saturday.  Hope to see you soon to enjoy some excellent fall whale watching.

September 1, 2008

Tons and tons of Fin whales yesterday!  The highlight of the day was a group of seven Fin whales who were feeding together.  They would all surface in a group, just feet from each other.  Thats 500 feet of whale right next to the boat!  At one point we were just shut down drifting and the group turned in towards us and proceeded to swim right under the boat.  It is impressive anytime just one whale does this, but when seven do it at the same time, it leaves you a little speechless!!

There have also been a few Minkes around, and we are still seeing lots of different pods of Atlantic White Sided Dolphins.  We also had a very friendly Blue Shark who we fed hot dogs to.  He agreed that they tasted great!

It's officially fall, so we hope you can join us for our favorite time of the season!

Named Whales Sighted 2009

Humbacks

Basmati and calf

Boomerang

Cajun

Chromosome

Clipper and calf!!!

Colt

Compass

Crisp

Cygnus

Diablo

Dice

Fan

Filament

Flask!!!

Fracture

Freckles

Fundy's 2008 calf

Glo-stick

Gondolier

Hornbill

Ivee

Jabiru

Komodo

Literal

Leukos

Midnight

Milky Way

Mudskipper

Newton!!!

Owl

Patchwork

Pinball

Pina & Calf

Polaris

Quote

Raccoon

Sabot

Satula

Scylla

Sedge

Skua

Solas

Spinnaker

Stonewall

Sword

Tigris

Tornado

Trident

Tripod

Trough

Trowel

Upsillon

Valley

Wizard

Fin Whales

Crow

Dingle

Fjord

Ladder!!

Prong

0354

0402

0407

0509

0718

9709

9618

9724

9904