Sun July 11- Whale Watching

We left Montauk today with unlimited visibility and headed to where we had seen whales on Saturday.  As soon as we passed Montauk Point, we looked for dolphins and continued heading southeast.  Our first blows were from a whale seen on Saturday.  This poor whale is identifiable because of a massive set of propeller scars on its right side and its dorsal fin was mostly gone.  This is a young whale that had been seen in the NY harbor area and catalogued as NYC0224 by our colleagues at Gotham Whale. It was last seen around NYC on 6/25. We stayed with this whale for a while and headed to a second whale in the area. We ultimately met and photographed 4 humpbacks on this trip.  They were busy feeding and looking for food, often times coming up right next to us to check us out.  We are never in gear when waiting for whales to surface and presented no threats. After a few hours with the whales, it was time to head back.  On our way in we saw a groups of about 40 bottlenose dolphins and we stayed with them for a bit before proceeded back. By the way, we did have to retrieve many balloons on this trip, please never release helium filled balloons!

4 Humpback whales

40 Inshore bottlenose dolphins

32 Wilson’s Storm Petrels

2 Cory’s Shearwaters

20 Great Shearwaters

1 Manx Shearwater

1 Sooty Shearwater