Whale Watching

Another double species day! Humpbacks and minke whales! We headed out to excellent conditions with nearly unlimited visibility,2-3 foot seas,and reports of whales and dolphins nearby. With the predicted stormy conditions to occur within a few hours, we headed west and stayed nearer to shore than on previous trips. Spoiler alert – the predicted severe…

7 Hammerhead sharks, too many balloons, a tail throwing/slapping humpback, and bottlenose dolphins We headed out to look for whales and once again to escape from the heat. The visibility was 4 miles at first, but continued to open up as we headed south for a while, then east and after 2 hours from the…

We left Montauk today with unlimited visibility and headed to where we had seen whales on Saturday.  As soon as we passed Montauk Point, we looked for dolphins and continued heading southeast.  Our first blows were from a whale seen on Saturday.  This poor whale is identifiable because of a massive set of propeller scars on its right side and its dorsal fin was mostly gone.  This is a young whale that had been seen in the NY harbor area and catalogued as NYC0224 by our colleagues at Gotham Whale. It was last seen around NYC on 6/25. We stayed with this whale for a while and headed to a second whale in the area. We ultimately met and photographed 4 humpbacks on this trip.  They were busy feeding and looking for food, often times coming up right next to…

An Awesome Day of Whales and Dolphins We left Montauk today with overcast skies, heading southeast to where we had previously seen whales.  As soon as we passed Montauk Point, we had reports of dolphins close inshore, south of the point.  We headed over and soon came upon a pod of about 10 bottlenose dolphins. After some time with these dolphins, we continued southeast.  We had only traveled about 4 miles before we started to see “blows”.  We came up to a group of 6 humpback whales. They remained in this one area actively feeding.  We got some great looks at both the mature and a younger, small humpback (who once swam under the boat and surfaced only 30 feet away). The whales were making short dives to feed on the abundant bands of fish at the bottom and then on…

Finback whale! We left the dock at Montauk to look for whales and escape the heat.  Once we got into water with sea surface temperatures in the 63-640F, we relished the cool air. The winds were as predicted, SW at 15-20 knots, the seas were as predicted also at 3-4 feet. We headed SW 8 for…

Humpback and another day with a good variety of pelagic birds We left the dock at Montauk to clearing skies and fair weather for the second trip of the season.  Today the Viking Starship rounded Montauk Point and cruised southeast.  Over the next few hours we covered a lot of ocean searching for whales.  We observed…

A brief encounter with 20 inshore bottlenose dolphins We started our 2021 season slowly.  While we were successful in finding cetaceans (the group of animals that include whales, dolphins, and porpoises), our encounter with 20 inshore bottlenose dolphins was brief. We saw them crossing our bow about 500 yards away, but never really got good…

Sunday September 13, 2020 Humpbacks, dolphins, and shearwaters! Oh my! Our last 2020 trip continued our perfect season (100% success). Once again, our first humpback was a very small and elusive one, surfacing for a single blow and submerging for 9-11 minutes. We saw it fluke, but were never able to get photos of this whale. We headed on our way and encountered about 100 inshore bottlenose dolphins. Heading further east, we found our next whale, a juvenile humpback we’d seen back on 7/25/2020. We met up with another group of about 45 inshore bottlenose dolphins before coming across another humpback, one we’d originally seen on 7/31/2019, and again on 9/2/2020. The prey items in the water column were often very dense and either extended throughout the water, or hung to the bottom.  We saw more shearwaters than we’d seen in a…

Oh my, 60 Bottle Nose dolphins  and 9 Humpbacks in all! Dr. Artie Kopelman reports a great day of whale sightings. It was a little bouncy as we headed out in search of cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises). We headed directly to where we had seen the whales yesterday, but we couldn’t find them at first and we headed to another area.  It took some time, but we decided to head NNE the eyes of Captain David Marmeno found a whale about 2.3 nautical miles (nm) from where yesterday’s whales were. Once we found our first whale, we began seeing MANY more. We encountered one of Saturday’s whales and stayed with and photographed 3 others within 1.1 square miles. We also encountered multiple groups of inshore Bottle Nose Dolphins, about 60 individuals in all. By the time we had to leave,…

Breaching, lob-tailing, flipper slapping humpback and more! Our 9th trip of 2020 was difficult at first, but ultimately it did not disappoint. Just as in the past few trips, a small humpback would blow and dive, with dive times over 10 minutes long. We stayed with this whale and a few inshore bottlenose dolphins but decided to head off and search elsewhere. It took a bit but just before 4PM in the distance (2 nautical miles) we saw a humpback lob-tailing (slamming its tail on the water) over and over again. We reached it and it continued lob-tailing, the whale eventually rolling onto its back and began flipper slapping, also repeatedly. In a short while, it began to breach repeatedly, interspersed with flipper slapping and logging (resting). Wow, what a wonderfully array of humpback behaviors to see. This whale in…