Trip Report

We’re thrilled to publish our first trip report of the year! The Sea Hunter has once again teamed up with Capt. Gene of Conscious Breath Adventures for the 2022 Silver Bank humpback whale season.

With a brilliant mix of faces old and new, we took to the water in the cover of darkness on Saturday night in order to meet our first sunrise on the Silver Bank Sunday morning, surrounded by whales breaching in every direction. In fact, we might have even broken our record for quickest time to a whale interaction, when two adults approached our boat as soon as we were anchored. They circled us closely for around 40 minutes, and spy hopped a few yards away, enough times to invoke many squeals of joy from our happy guests. It looks like the whales of Silver Bank missed us as much as we missed them!

This really set the tone for the rest of the trip. Our first full day in the water was all about the surface action, with pec slapping, chin breaches, tail lobbing and even some full breaches all day long…

This began with a meet and greet with two peaceful adult whales. We slipped quietly into the water and simply floated above them as they rested at around 45’ (15m), with the whites of their fins shining up like beacons. They surfaced to check us out (and breathe) three or four times, passing us closely with curiosity before heading back down for another power nap. This happened time and time again, each time the escort looking us squarely in the eye. The boat was very full of smiles that day as this was the first time many of our guests had spent in the water with the whales before.

We also managed to find ourselves a calmer calf whose mother allowed us all in the water for a nice long swim, with each of our boats taking turns to admire these wonderful animals. One group was lucky enough to get a truly close pass, with the calf twisting and turning for a better look at us.

By the time we got to the last day, we were feeling good and could barely think of a whale combo we hadn’t encountered already. Eventually we realized none of us had seen a singer underwater yet, although we had listened to them plenty of times through the hydrophone, always a treat. We decided to manifest a singer and will one into being by singing ourselves. We loaded up our little bluetooth boat speaker with all of the Queen, A-Ha and other classic rock favorites we could find and started singing our own hearts out. And it worked! When Gene pulled out the hydrophone for a quick check of our surroundings, there was an individual singing extremely close- who minutes later suddenly appeared directly under Jeff’s boat drifting nearby. We then got to spend over an hour in the water taking turns to not only listen to the whale sing from our front row position, but also feel it shaking in our bones, the beautiful music reverberating through us all. It was a perfect ending to a fantastic trip, and now we can’t wait to see what next week has in store for us.