Fins and Minkes

No matter which ones you see, whales are always a treat. 

We went on a whale watching trip out of Lubec with Downeast Charter Boat Tours and Captain Ralph.

The tide was way out when we arrived and we had quite a downward walk toward the boat.

The Lorna Doone, is a 25' Northern Bay lobster yacht, located on Johnson Bay.

We took this trip in 2011 (See August 31, 2011 blog post Whale Watching on the Bay of Fundy).

The Lorna Doone is very comfortable.  It only seats 6 passengers.

We had a beautiful calm day for our trip.

It took us about an hour to get to the whales.  We stopped for birds and seals along the way.  The Bonaparte's Gulls were already losing the jet-black hoods that they wear during breeding season.  Fall is on the way!

And it seems we like see a Bald Eagle (or several) anytime we're on the coast. Can you spot this one perched in the tree?

We saw several groups of Gray Seals, including this group with a pup.

Seals swim in the channel known as the Narrows between Lubec and Campobello Island.

Did I mention it was low tide?

The tides here are twenty to twenty-five feet through the Narrows and surrounding bays.

We saw three Fin (aka Finback) Whales, which are the second largest animal on earth at a length of 80' and a weight of 100,000 pounds. Only the Blue Whale is larger.

It is pretty much impossible to get an entire Fin Whale in a picture due to the way they swim, so here is an illustration so you can see what the entire whale looks like:

Now here is what we usually saw from the boat:

Comparing the illustration with our picture tells you that we generally saw less than half of the whale, and they were still huge!

In this picture you can see the "blow" which is the whale exhaling through its blow hole on the left, and then part of the back and the small dorsal fin well to the right.

Later in the trip we saw a couple of Northern Minke Whales, which are on the small end of whales at  around 20' long and 10,000 pounds. It turns out that Minke Whales aren't any easier to get pictures of, as they tend to surface and then dive very quickly. Here is the best we got:

This international bridge connects Maine with Canada.  Canada Custom on the left, US Customs on the right. We were right off the Canadian shoreline for our trip.

The end.