Fri Aug 30-Whale Watching

Friday, August 30, 2019

A Beautiful Day with Whales all Around

Today was a sunny , beautiful day as we set out again in search of whales.  We only had to round Montauk Point and cruise along the south shore for 40 minutes before seeing our first whale blowing.  This turned out to be a humpback whale, in very shallow water (50 feet) making shallow feeding dives.  The water was literally teeming with giant schools of bait fish, menhaden, at the surface.  The whale was only going down for a bit over 2 minutes as it’s food was right at the surface.

Within a half hour we spotted several other blows and investigated.  We watched these other 4 humpbacks feeding on and off for the rest of the afternoon.

Looking towards the beach we saw a pair of whales moving very closely together.  Captain Dave brought the Viking Starship over to them and we were amazed to see they were fin whales- at one and a half miles from the shore, we had never seen this species so close to shore!  This pair of medium whales, about 40 feet long, gave us several good looks as they too were feeding on the surface menhaden.  Within the hour we saw quite a few other whales, more fins, humpbacks and a couple of minke whales.

The children aboard kept yelling with delight as whales surfaced over and over around the boat.  We were running out of time when a humpback whale, as if to wave “good-bye”,  did a “down dive” and put its tail fluke up in the air before disappearing again.