Sun July 12 – Whale Watching

Another epic 5 cetacean species day!

Conditions were perfect- calm seas, unlimited visibility, and a boatload of whale and pelagic bird enthusiasts. As expected, we encountered a pod of 15-20 Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins in 76.5′ of water. We continued offshore and encountered 200 Short-beaked common dolphins in multiple groups of 10. Several groups came over to swim in our bow wake and their vocalizations were loud enough to be heard on the upper deck (a first time for me).Shortly thereafter, we see blows in the distance and head further offshore. We find ourselves among finback whales, minke whales,and humpback whales. We didn’t find the large numbers that we’d being seeing, but that was made up for by the incredible special encounters such as mom and calf finback whales, a possible mom/calf minke whale association (our 1st ever) and 2 associated humpbacks that eventually decided to swim right up to the Viking Starship and watch us! The “mugging humpbacks” were a few feet from the boast hanging out at the surface for almost 45 minute, sometimes on THE starboard side, other times they’d swim under us and pop up on the port side, then forward, then aft. Our engines were obviously out of gear and we were mesmerized for 30 minutes until we had to head back to the dock from our nearly 15 past Montauk Light. All photo taken with Nikon Z8 and Nikkor Z180-600MM lens. All WhaleSAFE, MMPA, and ESA protocols were followed.