Fri Aug 10

Wednesday August 8, 2018
7 Humpbacks and 1 Fin Whale!

We found whales again.  As usual, when it’s warm on land, we were glad to get offshore, but it was still pretty warm. We didn’t have to go far to find our first whales – 2 humpbacks, a mom and her calf.  The mom had been seen by us one month earlier about 7 nm further east. She and her calf were our first of 7 humpbacks for the day.  These whales were thin and feeding, a must for them this time of year.  The calf showed signs of having been entangled, but no gear could be seen, so the calf had also been freed of its entanglement. We continued to find humpback whales throughout the trip, including several that were also relatively thin. We got ID photos from most (underside of flukes) and are checking against our catalog for LI, as well as others from NYC, the Gulf of Maine, and Mid-Atlantic.  We found an incredibly rare Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle and heard about whales east of our location and headed there to find more humpbacks and a young finback whale. While there, we heard of dolphins in Fort Pond Bay and decided to head in to look for them. We didn’t find the dolphins, but found lots of bait and birds (terns, gulls, and shearwaters).  Another amazing trip!

Totals
7 humpback whales
1 finback whale
1 Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle
35 Cory’s shearwaters
5 Great shearwaters
1 Sooty shearwater
1 Manx shearwater
1 Parasitic jaeger

Photos at https://drartiek-cresli.smugmug.com/CRESLI-2018-Whale-Watches/2018-08-08-Montauk-Whale-Watch/