Sat Sept 12 – Whale Watching
Close to shore and lots of humpbacks!
Our trip on the Viking Star left Montauk on a perfect day with calm seas, blue skies and a light breeze. We had just rounded Montauk Point when we spotted a pod of Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins, about 15-20 individuals. Our vessel stopped, as we watched them, when several dolphins came up to and around our bow, swam away and then came back again. Tamanend’s have not usually been making these close approaches, and the passengers really enjoyed the encounter.
Proceeding along the south shore eastward, we started passing huge schools of menhaden at the surface. These fish, in their huge “bait balls”, were a mass of flashing silver scales, and are an important part of the marine food chain. Sure enough, in a few minutes, we saw our first humpback whales eating them. These 4 whales were swimming up under the menhaden schools and erupting from the water with mouths agape- lunge feeding on the abundant fish.
After some time and many good looks, we continued heading west along the shore and came upon more humpbacks. First, we observed 2 juveniles lunge feeding together. They would charge a fish school as one, with open mouths almost touching as fish scattered and tried to leap out of their way.
We moved along and encountered more juvenile humpbacks who started traveling quite fast to join the other feeding whales. They had short dive times of less than a minute with only one quick breath each time they surfaced. It was interesting to see that many of these whales were very close to the beach, in extremely shallow water, sometimes 30 feet deep or less.
Towards the end of our trip, we headed into deeper water and found another adult humpback whale. It was making a series of dives in one area, probably feeding on the fish along the bottom. As is common, we noticed this whale had an injury on its left side, perhaps caused by a vessel impact.
As time ran out, we turned back to the harbor after another great trip.
- 18-25 Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins
- 9-10 Humpback whales
- 2 Sooty Shearwaters