Lost Blueberries: Whale Watching


This is my favorite shot of the day, a whale's tail waterfall

Today is Sarah's Birthday and for her special day she wanted to go on a boat and do some whale watching. She researched the local options and chose a local company with a few small boats, 6 pack size. Sarah also invited along two of her friends so we had 2/3 of the boat and then two other tourists. The folks that own the company, and our captain for the day, live on the back side of Shelter Island. Its about a half hour ride to Auke Bay he says. Our captain's name was Jay Beedle, and he and a buddy of his started the company about 25 years ago, I believe. The call it Harvin Marv's, nick names from high school. He is a professional photographer and also the foremost expert on our local humpback whale pod. He has named and identified most in the area and works one on one with NOAA, also he writes articles for the local paper. Really cool guy, super nice and intelligent. Anyways, it was a nice day weather wise and the seas were moderately calm and the whale watching was spectacular. There were groups of 5-7 at a time, all blowing and fluking. We also saw some fin waving and nose bobbing after filling their mouths with krill and small herring. All around wonderful day! I took about 400 shots and of that 300 were ok. Of those only a few where really spectacular and one in particular is my favorite. Also some of my tail shots showed us that there were some new whales in the area that were not named or known of yet. I believe two of them. Would love to be able to name them after Sarah and I, ha ha ha. Anyhoo, it was about a 3 hour trip, not to expensive and a really nice boat. So onto the pics.