New Hampshire’s 30 humpback whale records cluster overwhelmingly in summer: July through September account for 25 of the 30 sightings, tracking the months these Gulf of Maine whales spend feeding on schooling fish off the Seacoast before migrating south to Caribbean breeding grounds each winter. The state’s short coastline sees passage and feeding activity rather than a resident population, and no formal state rank is recorded here.
With 26 of the 30 records from iNaturalist, most sightings likely come from whale-watching trips or shore observations rather than survey data, and the near-total absence of records outside the summer season, nothing at all from November through March, fits a species that simply isn’t present in New Hampshire waters that time of year.
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