Wed July 16 – Whale Watching

A spectacular afternoon with an interesting and well-known humpback whale and loads of dolphins! On a brutally warm and muggy day on land, we were all ready for a cooler day at sea. We headed towards the area where we’d been seeing dense patches of prey, birds, and cetaceans for the past week. The prey, and predators (cetaceans and birds) were gone. We had to pick a direction to travel, westward or eastward. We started heading west, but Captain Dave changed his mind and turned us eastward.  That was the right move. We spent time with a large aggregation of short-beaked common dolphins. Thern we saw blows from far off and found 25-year-old Mostaza, a female humpback whale that we’d seen on our past 2 trips (and many times before). Mostaza was open-mouth feeding, each time after she closed her mouth, she would roll-over. The dolphins came over as well. This was a magical encounter that included lots of pelagic birds as well

220 Short-beaked common dolphins

1 humpback whale

47 Great shearwaters

19 Cory’s shearwaters

11 Wilson’s storm petrels

Photos available at https://drartiek-cresli.smugmug.com/CRESLI-2025-Whale-Watches/2025-07-16-Montauk-Whale-Watch