Mystery Whale from boat trip - IDENTIFIED!
Steve Mirick
fishing trip, you'll notice I included the report of a strange small whale:
> Small Whale sp. - Very strange looking small whale with not much (or
> no) dorsal fin and no significant blow roughly south of the Isles of
> Shoals. Came up 3 or 4 times. Not sure what this was, but it didn't
> have a dorsal fin like a Minke.
The big excitement was from the remote possibility that this could
possibly be THE incredibly rare Pygmy Sperm Whale that had recently
beached itself briefly on Salisbury Beach, but freed itself as the tide
came in:
https://www.newburyportnews.com/news/officials-respond-to-rare-stranded-pygmy-sperm-whale/article_e3f5aea0-73d4-11ec-85b6-1358daa3ab76.html
I didn't think there was any chance that we would ever figure this
mystery out, but fortunately, Leo Mckillop got some nice photos of the
whale. I sent them off to Melanie White, a Right Whale biologist (in
the winter) and naturalist on the Granite State Whale Watch (in the
summer) out of Rye, NH. And she quickly and enthusiastically responded
that it was "FINKE"!!
Turns out "Finke" is the name that was given to this uniquely marked
Minke Whale. "Finke" (for finless Minke) is a rare Minke Whale that has
no dorsal fin; likely lost in a boat collision early in its life. It
has been seen off and on off the NH/MA/ME coastline for the last 10
years with the first sighting from back in 2011!!! All previous
sightings were from summer months, so it was very cool to actually
document this animal during winter months!
So.....not a Pygmy Sperm Whale....or an even more rare "Beaked" Whale.
Just a Minke Whale. Other than the lack of a dorsal fin, you can see
the unique scar markings. Particularly the pale gray/white scar patch
on the left side of the body in this photo:
https://flic.kr/p/2mXhBPV
And a couple of other photos:
https://flic.kr/p/2mXevVQ
https://flic.kr/p/2mXevVu
Here is a blog post from Melanie White back in 2018 when they spotted
this individual for the first time in a couple of years. Scroll down a
little bit to see their photo and her comments:
http://granitestatewhalewatch.blogspot.com/2018/06/
Steve Mirick
Bradford, MA
Linda Scotland
Thank you so much for this post. Very interesting and I'm so glad you nailed it. We live on Cape Neddick Harbor, have a boat, and spend time looking for whales and marine life and now will be obsessed with finding this creature! 😊
We'll never see it ,of course, but we'll have lots of fun looking for it!
Linda Scotland
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