We booked the same Airbnb that we vacationed at last year again this year but later in July. We enjoy being on the Cape and taking the opportunity to go whale watching off Provincetown, deep sea fishing, Stillwater Pond fishing, shopping in P’town or Chatham and going to the beach. So this will be a report out on our week long vacation which will have to be a series because we have so many pictures! Wink asked me to do the whale watching first. So here goes…….
We got a late start the day we decided to go whale watching and just missed the ten AM boat. So we bought tickets for the noon boat. We were told it was a larger boat and was only half full. That was our first lucky break. The boat wasn’t crowded so it made it easy to see and photograph the whales. It also meant we had a bit of a wait on the pier.
Kate-Lynne still has issues with her sprained ankle, so we borrowed a wheelchair from a neighbor and made good use of it. We left the wheelchair on shore and Kate-Lynne and Meg got a seat in the shade aft on the main deck. Mark and Wink got a shaded bench seat on the upper deck. The captain did a good job seeing that everyone on board had a chance to see the whales.
We left P’town harbor and headed out to the Stellwagen Bank in search of whales.
We didn’t have to go far before we started seeing them.
The whales can be identified by their tail markings. Each whale is named and the mothers of the whales can be identified. Here are the tails of the whales we saw on this trip.
We saw quite a few different behaviors. The whales would dive and blow bubbles and feed. Only individual whales did this.
Another behavior we observed was logging, which is essentially taking a nap on the surface.
There was a mom with a calf.
One whale was also breaching and slapping. He put on quite a show. He breached eight or ten times. We didn’t take any video of this event unfortunately.
He also showed off by slapping the water.
A blue shark cruised past us as we were whale watching.
Along with whale watching was bird watching.
The guide summarized the trip at the end. Sorry about the glare.
As you can see, we identified ten whales and a blue shark. We observed a range of behaviors. And we didn’t have to go very far to accomplish this. We just travelled to the edge of the Stellwagen Bank.
As far as whale watching trips go, this was a pretty good trip.
Mark, Wink, Meg, Kate-Lynne and Mae
yowza! a perfect day…
Looks like a great trip!
Great photos, videos and story of your trip. Thank you!