On Friday, we left the dock around 6:45 AM, eager to see what our second survey would hold. Not too far in to our tracklines, the dark clouds that seemed so far away decided to let a few raindrops loose on us. The worst of the weather ended up on land, where folks experienced a severe storm. Lightning even struck not too far from our field station in Lubec!
























Happily, the success of Thursday's survey was not an anomaly- we started seeing right whales just before 9 AM. Our sightings were of many familiar faces that we didn't see the day before, like Junction (Catalog #3745), Phantom (#3803), and Quatro (#1968).



We also saw a team favorite, Aphrodite (#1701)- actually, she is so well-loved that she's the star on the back of our Right Whale Research Program T-Shirts! Aphrodite was hanging out at the surface while we were observing her, and then all of a sudden she kind of scrunched up, rolled over and dove while upside down. It was a fun thing to watch- we're always amazed at how flexible and graceful these large whales are.







As it got later in the day, the winds picked up and we decided to head in to avoid getting caught in the worsening weather. We were thrilled with the day we had- about 30 individuals photographed!! Needless to say, we're all in high spirits here and looking forward to the next day at sea.

- Marianna