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Sat July 10 – Whale Watching

An Awesome Day of Whales and Dolphins

We left Montauk today with overcast skies, heading southeast to where we had previously seen whales.  As soon as we passed Montauk Point, we had reports of dolphins close inshore, south of the point.  We headed over and soon came upon a pod of about 10 bottlenose dolphins.

After some time with these dolphins, we continued southeast.  We had only traveled about 4 miles before we started to see “blows”.  We came up to a group of 6 humpback whales. They remained in this one area actively feeding.  We got some great looks at both the mature and a younger, small humpback (who once swam under the boat and surfaced only 30 feet away).

The whales were making short dives to feed on the abundant bands of fish at the bottom and then on some fish at the surface.  The dolphins from earlier arrived, were joined by another pod of bottlenose, and rapidly attacked the surface schools of fish, churning the water white.  Several of the dolphins were swimming very close to a few of the whales, perhaps opportunistically catching fish fleeing from the feeding humpbacks.   We stayed with these whales for a few hours, with passengers getting good looks of the whales feeding all around the vessel and were able to take some good ID photos for the database.  One adult humpback had been struck by a large propeller and had extensive scars to show for it.

Being so close to Montauk some of the photographers aboard managed photos of whales with the lighthouse in the background for some memorable images.

  • 6 Humpback whales
  • 40 Bottlenose dolphins
  • 4 Cory’s shearwaters
  • 15 Wilsons storm petrels