Whale Watching off Cape Cod

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I have never been whale watching, but it was something that I always wanted to do! Being a nature- and animal-lover, I naturally wanted to see some of Earth’s biggest mammals. And I got my wish this trip!

My parents and I drove to Provincetown, which is at the ‘fist’ of the Cape Cod arm. Both of them had already been whale watching, in Maine, in Quebec, but not me. We asked the saleswoman what our chances were of seeing a whale, and she said 99%! Good enough for me!

We boarded the Dolphin Fleet’s ship at 1pm, and set sail at 1:30pm. It turned out to be a beautiful sunny day (when we woke up, it was grey and drizzly).

The first whale we spotted was on our way to the main feeding grounds. It was a lone finback whale, rather difficult to see apart from the plumes of mist as the whale breathed. Everyone on the boat ran over to the port side to try and take photos.

Then we hit the main feeding grounds. There was a pair of humpback whale mothers with their two babies! The mothers were named Nile and Echo by the fleet for research purposes, and as they were gorging themselves on sand eels, their babies copied their swimming patterns and played around, curious about our boat and showing off with some full-on breaching! Even such a large baby, about 4 tons, still acts like a baby!

While its mama was feeding, this baby humpback swam close to our boat to take a look at us.

And here is a baby humpback messing around and breaching. Adorable and awe-inspiring!

Here are all four humpbacks, two mamas and two babies, feeding and playing around.

There were one or two other whales further off, minke whales and a finback. Difficult to make out since they don’t hump their backs as much as the humpbacks (I guess that’s where they got their name?). But we were often surrounded by eating whales! The humpback whales make a ring of bubbles, which scares and concentrates the sand eels (which we could see from the boat), and then they lunge up with open mouths, trying to suck in as many eels as possible while avoiding swallowing any of the gulls which congregate above (they snatch eels from the top).

We also saw a couple of grey seals hanging out in the ocean, curiously taking a look at us goofy tourists.

The whole trip took about 3.5 hours, and we saw so many whales and as you can see, some great shots!