These reports are provided by Jennifer Hafner, a former intern of the Whale Center Of New England, who now works as a naturalist for the Isle of Shoals Steamship Co. and as a contributing researcher of field data to the Whale Center Of New England.

August 28, 2001

We had a great day today, with an unusual sighting of a pod of pilot whales, a pod of 20-30 dolphins, 2 minke whales, and 3 ocean sunfish! We hope this indicates more life on the ledge in the coming weeks...

August 2, 2001

We had an amazing day today, with a sighting of the female humpback "Owl" (a familiar 'Jeffrey's Whale') and her calf. They were so exciting to watch, as they did spectacular feeding and even breached (jumped out of the water)! This was definitely not a typical day!

July 23, 2001

We saw our second humpback of the season today (we're not sure where they've been all year, perhaps in deeper waters off Jeffrey's Ledge), a familiar male named Satula, who we've been seeing since the 1980's. We also saw 2 minkes.Ê

July 21, 2001

We had sightings of small whales today, with a total of 4 minkes. We also saw an ocean sunfish, one of the strangest-looking marine creatures we see. These are the world's largest bony fish species, and can reach lengths up to 10' across (although the ones we see are usually 5-6' across). Luckily for us, they feed only on plankton!

July 14, 2001

Whales were plentiful today - we saw one finback whale, eight minke whales, and also 20-30 harbor seals!

July 13, 2001

After getting reports of whales 17 miles away, we were surprised to find 2 finback whales only about 5 miles from the Isles of Shoals! The whales were moving pretty quickly, so it was hard to tell how many we had, but we think we saw 2 or 3 different finbacks.

July 3, 2001

We had a great day today, with a sighting of our first humpback of the season. We were thrilled to discover that the whale was "Pinball", a female humpback we've been seeing frequently out on Jeffrey's Ledge for the last 10 years or so. Pinball seemed to be traveling at first, then discovered a patch of food (as she made an abrupt turn and then started circling around the same area). Passengers were thrilled with the sight of her huge fluke as she dove down, and we could see how she got her name - from large black dots within the white patches on her fluke, which look like pinballs. We finished the trip with a cruise by Duck Island at the Isles of Shoals, where we saw about 60 harbor seals hauled-out on the rocks. What a day!

June 30, 2001

We had a great day today, with a sighting of a finback mother and calf! We got great close looks at these whales, as well as a minke whale in the area.

June 20, 2001

Sightings improved today, with multiple minke whales in the area. We ended up seeing one whale up close, and then moved on to see two minkes feeding in the same area.

June 19, 2001

Sightings seem to be dropping off, but we did get great looks at one minke whale who was only about 8 miles away from the Isles of Shoals.

June 9, 2001

We had a gorgeous day today, and there were lots of schools of mackerel out on the Ledge. Unfortunately, we didn't find any whales! Curiously, we often notice a change in whale movements around a full moon, so maybe this had something to do with our lack of sightings. Our next trip is Wednesday, June 13, so we're hoping for better luck then!

June 4, 2001

We had a pretty good day today - there were several minke whales around. We saw a total of 5 minkes and also passed about 100 harbor seals who were sunning themselves on the rocks around Duck Island.

June 1, 2001

We had a great day today, with sightings of 8 minke whales, 1 finback whale, and a pod of about 10 Atlantic white-sided dolphins! We also were lucky enough to see about 100 harbor seals on Duck Island, and also saw the schooner Pride of Baltimore II getting ready to come into the harbor!

May 11, 2001

We had our first whale watch of 2001 on Friday, May 11. Our season started out pretty well. We headed out toward Jeffreys Ledge and spent most of our time inshore of the Ledge at a smaller area called Old Scantum. We started off by seeing a group of about 4 harbor porpoises about 1 1/2 hours into the trip. The porpoises were unusually "cooperative", surfacing slowly several times, so we got great looks at them. Porpoises are 4-6' long, and usually fairly skitterish around boats.

Then we moved on and saw our first minke whale of the day. We spent some time with this whale, then moved on and saw another minke. This whale was fun to watch - it circled the boat several times and we could see its white "minke mittens" under the water. The whale had a strange scar in front of its dorsal fin. Sadly, it looks like the scar was the result of an entanglement in some rope (this is pretty common among minkes, and many do survive the entanglements).