Sat July 17 – Whale Watching

7 Hammerhead sharks, too many balloons, a tail throwing/slapping humpback, and bottlenose dolphins

We headed out to look for whales and once again to escape from the heat. The visibility was 4 miles at first, but continued to open up as we headed south for a while, then east and after 2 hours from the dock we found our 1st surprise – a large hammerhead shark (unsure of which species). Every direction we moved brought us new hammerhead sharks. Over 0.6 nautical miles, we encountered 7 different hammerheads.  That’s a record for us. As we continued on, we saw little,  and picked up too many balloons (c’mon folks it’s time to stop), but never stopped looking. At around 6 PM we saw a blow in the distance, and soon smelled the putrid, fetid, foul odor of a humpback with a possible lung infection (whale flu, as termed by Dr. Paul Forestell and others). The whale (NYC0084) was tail-throwing and tail-slapping (behaviors often used for non-vocal communication). We were in 130′ of water, but the prey were only 35′ down, so this whale did some low-fluking dives in search of food. We eventually had to leave, just as a small pod of about 20 bottlenose dolphins paid us a brief visit.  We headed in through pea soup fog and returned late, but happy.

1 humpback whale

20 inshore bottlenose dolphins

7 hammerhead sharks

12 Wilson’s storm petrels

4 Great shearwaters

6 Cory’s shearwaters

1 Manx shearwater

6 phalaropes (unsure of species)