Fri July 25 – Whale Watching

A challenging but successful day!

We left the dock expecting to escape from the heat and we did. We encountered wind and expected 4-5′ seas. We found a pod of about 20-10 Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins about 1.5 nautical miles from Montauk Point. We then headed ESE, experiencing the classic “old-time rock-and- roll” of 4-5′ seas for a few hours. We traveled through the area in which we’d found whales, dolphins, and pelagic birds on Monday 7/33/25. Spotting blows at distance was challenging due to all the white caps, and the wind, and waves. We searched and traveled and then at about 20 nm out, a finback whale blew 100 yards ahead of us! We could see the blows  (3 or 4 a few seconds apart, and the whale would go down for a terminal dive of 5-10 minutes, then come up 100-200 yards away. After about 30 minutes, the whale briefly surface close enough to see and attempt to photograph its right side and dorsal fin. We will compare this fin whale to the other 192 fin whales in our catalog. It was a long and challenging trip. We got back to the dock and off the vessel just as a massive thunderstorm began. Perfect timing. We head out again on Sunday

20-30 Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins

1 finback whale

~100 great shearwaters

~200 Wilson’s storm petrels

Photos to view and/or purchase to help support our work – prints, digital copies, and framed artwork available will be available later at https://drartiek-cresli.smugmug.com/CRESLI-2025-Whale-Watches/2025-07-25-Montauk-Whale-Watch