Whale Watching

Our 2024 trip reports are starting to sound more like fairytales than whale watching summaries and that is especially true for our Wednesday, July 25 th trip. The east end experienced flooding rains in the morning and fog sopped in much of Montauk ahead of the trip. It was drizzling and/or extremely damp as we…

Whale watch on the Viking Star, one of the best local whale trips of the past 20+ years! Once again, we are running out of superlatives! Today’s trip, like so many others, began with a small pod of 15 Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins. We received a report of “20 whales” miles ahead, about where they were…

We are running out of superlatives to describe the Viking/CRESLI whale watches this season…and its only July! It was the trip of a lifetime for our passengers yesterday as we continued to find the large humpback whales feeding offshore including two mom/calf pairs and a large pod of short-beaked common dolphins. With the Summer Olympics…

What an amazing experience for the passengers aboard the Viking Star yesterday! We headed off to find the many whales encountered on Wednesday’s trip, but were happily interrupted by three separate pods of Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins while en route. Blows from humpback whales were spotted ahead as a minke whale and large pod of short-beaked…

It keeps getting better and better – another 4 species day with dozens of whales! Once again, we headed out to sea and escaped the heat.  The visibility was excellent in terms of distance, but hazy.  It didn’t matter. Cap’t. Steven D. Forsberg radioed to tell us of “thousands of whales” offshore. It wasn’t thousands,…

Hungry, Hungry Humpbacks! What an amazing day whale watching aboard the Viking Star! We left the heat of land in favor of cool, ocean breezes traveling approximately ten miles south to an area of reported whale activity. Two blows were spotted, belonging to a pair of humpback whales which turned out to be our first…

Another 4 species day!   We headed out to escape from the heat and found our first whales (2 small humpbacks) shortly after we passed the Montauk Lighthouse. We were able to spend some time with one that was flipper slapping and rolling over quite a lot. It was swimming, diving, and feeding in shallow water that was filled from surface to the bottom with Atlantic menhaden (AKA bunker). We eventually left this whale and headed further out. We came across a massive aggregation of 400-500 short-beaked common dolphins. They were everywhere we looked and often groups came to ride our bow wake.  The passengers at the bow were able to look down and see and HEAR the dolphins vocalizing! The joy on people’s faces said it all! What a beautiful encounter.  Later we briefly  encountered a group of bottlenose…

On our fourth whale watch of the 2024 season, we replaced the heat and humidity on land for cool, offshore breezes at sea. Dense fog blanketed the Point, so we headed south to deeper water where visibility improved. Here, we encountered a small group of bottlenose dolphins, likely Tamanend’s, approximately seven miles from shore. This pod of 8-12 included, upon later photographic investigation, a young calf, which bore the light vertical lines from fetal folding while in the uterus. These lines remain on the young dolphin for up to a few months after birth. We continued in search of the whales and dolphins encountered in this same area just four and six days earlier. Unfortunately, the water which was a beautiful turquoise green, was now devoid of prey. Occasional groups of shearwaters (Cory’s and Great) and a few ‘rafts’ of…

The third whale watch of our 2024 season was as successful and amazing as the first two! We headed out in search of two whales reported to be feeding right off the lighthouse. Blows and splashes could be seen before I even finished talking about the historic landmark. Between six to eight humpbacks could be seen feeding and diving on the abundant sand eels (sand lance) in the area. We spent most of our time watching two whales kick feed, throwing their massive bodies sideways, kicking at the bait in the water and coming up immediately after with large, gaping open mouths, as they filter out the fish through their dense mats of baleen. There were about six whales in the immediate vicinity, in all directions, so it took time to eventually encounter all of them. CRESLI can identify individual…

Another spectacular multispecies trip (humpbacks, minkes, finbacks, and Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins We left the dock under excellent conditions (unlimited visibility and 2′ seas).  Early on, just around Montauk Lighthouse we found ~300 Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins, always a good way to start.  Further out, we encountered a small and lethargic humpback whale. We stayed with it…