During the spring the numbers of whales sighted along the east coast of Newfoundland were up dramatically from 1998 as the warm water and absence of icebergs likely encouraged good feeding. There were large numbers of these whales together with an occasional fin whale spotted until mid-August when only a group of minkes off St. John's Harbour provided reliable sightings for visitors. Fin whales are the second largest animal to ever live. They have a patchy distribution as they move about the coast but most holiday groups got excellent sightings. Minke whales are the smallest baleen whales and are very abundant, typically seen by everybody throughout the summer.
Humpbacks are the acrobat of the whale world.
This year we got some excellent photographs as the good feeding seemed to encourage lots of playful behaviour. Our staff members have been studying the province's whales since 1979, and they report dolphins were more abundant in 1998 and 1999 than they have ever seen before. We found one dead harbour porpoise off Bay Bulls and while the autopsy was inconclusive, some slight surface scars suggest it might have drowned in a net. Two murres and a puffin were luckier as we captured them live as they struggled to escape from pieces of discarded netting. They were all safely released.