Whale Watching

Wednesday August 25, 2020 Whales and dolphins! 40 minutes of inverted lob-tailing by 1 humpback A few hours before our trip, Dr. Artie Kopelman (CRESLI president and senior scientist/naturalist) observe several humpbacks from shore at the western end of Montauk. High winds from the NNW helped us to decide to head west to look for whales. Right near Montauk Point we encountered 2 whales, a minke and a humpback. The humpback was diving for 9 minutes at a stretch, and the minke was almost impossible to see . After 3 minutes with these whale, we continued westward to find a small group of bottlenose dolphins. We ultimately turned to have the wind behind, and shortly later, we found a humpback we’d see on 8/19/2020 and 8/18/2019, namely NYC0084. In 2019, it was breaching, today (8/25/2020), it was lob-tailing for at…

Humpbacks and more Common Bottlenose dolphins A special day for many reasons As usual, we were headed to where we had seen whales on our previous trip. We were lucky enough to encounter a very special whale, Nile’s 2016 calf. Three weeks ago this 4 year-old calf was found severely entangled in 3900 pounds of cable and line about 10 miles out of New York Harbor. He had just enough slack to allow him to surface in breath. It took the disentanglement teams three days to get him out. Our sighting of this juvenile whale with the first since he was disentangled. The disentanglement was a joint effort of many institutions, they’ve been notified of our sighting and are elated! He is scarred severely but is feeding and seems to be moving quite well we have our fingers crossed. By the…

3 Humpbacks and about 300 NW Atlantic Norther Migratory Common Bottlenose Dolphins Wednesday August 12, 2020 WOW what a trip! We had reports of whales around they Midway Buoy and within an hour we found out first whale, a humpback we hadn’t seen before. A short while after staying with this whale, we came upon our first groups of NW Atlantic Norther Migratory (AKA “In-shore”) Common Bottlenose Dolphins. At least 3 groups interacting and seemingly driving massive groups of prey.  The groups dolphins would work together, with some driving forward and others turning to produce vortex-like field which formed a large circular slick.  The dolphins would converge and chaos would occur. Our second groups of dolphins, over 180 of them joined in the fray. Were they feeding? We never saw them with prey in their mouths? We they mating? This…

4 Humpback whales and 2 Minkes. Within 30 minutes of passing Montauk Lighthouse and within 10 minutes of the crew “on-station” to look in earnest for whales, we saw our first blows. Our 1st Humpback was one we had seen last week as well about 8 nm (nautical miles) to the SSW and only about 4 nm from Montauk Lighthouse. This was the first of our 4 Humpbacks and 2 Minke whales of the day. Our 2nd Humpback was 2 miles away at first and joined the other whale in feeding at depth on bunker. We saw massive bunker pods at the surface, but they were only the upper boundaries of giant 80’ thick plumes of bunker. Our Minke whales joined in briefly. A while later, several miles away, we found our last 2 Humpbacks 4 Humpback whales 2 Minke…

Sat Aug 1 – Whale Watching 2 Humpback Whales – 18 and 10 consecutive breaches at the end of our trip! Nice way to end the afternoon. Our 3rd trip of the 2020 season was one for the books. Again, we had reports of whales from several places and began our trip with a great plan to survey an area not far from Gurney’s. Excellent visibility and conditions allowed us to see blows from really far. Our first stop was ~6nm (nautical miles) south of the Lighthouse, where we had seen blows from about 1.5 nm away.  Those whales were gone, so we headed west (2 nm) and found the first of 2 whales, one seen on the 7/18/2020 trip (MTK.2020.07.18-01). Our 2nd whale was one we had seen on the 7/25/2020 trip (MTK.2020.07.25-02). We also encountered an aggregation of…

CANCELLED – ALL TRIPS Tuesday August 4th & Wednesday August, 5th    

Sat July 25 – Whale Watching 3 Humpback Whales, 1 Minke Whale and more Our 2nd trip of the 2020 season didn’t let us down. We had reports of whales from several places and began our trip with a great plan. With excellent visibility and conditions, we found our first whale within 40 minutes from passing Montauk Light, a humpback. This whale was busy searching for food 100′ down and would rise to the surface after a few minutes, blow 5-6 times and dive. We stayed with the whale until it tail slapped and we decided to head further. We headed ENE towards and found our 2nd whale about 1 hour later.  We’d seen it from ~1.5 miles away and when we got near the area,  it popped up just under our bowsprit. Luckily we were almost at idle speed….

This morning on the 1/2 Day fishing trip we got lucky and spotted a bunch of porpoises. If you are interested in seeing porpoises, dolphins, whales and other marine life join us on one of our Whale Watching Trips. We have been sighting them close to shore!! The trips run on Saturdays through September 5th from 2pm to 7pm. $75 for 13 and over. $50 for 5 to 12 year olds. 4 and under are free. Please call 631-668-5700 or book online at vikingfleet.com

4 humpback whales and massive schools of Atlantic menhaden (bunker). Great way to start the season! The Viking Fleet and CRESLI began our 24th consecutive season of whale watching trips just where we left off, i.e., finding whales. We had reports of whales that morning (seen from shore by our naturalist, Dr. Artie Kopelman, and heard in the fog aboard the Viking Starship that morning by the intrepid Viking Fleet mate, Joey Ferguson). We also had reports of dolphins west of town. Out we headed and within a short while we were past Montauk Light looking for cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises). Shortly thereafter a fog bank rolled in and we continued on and listened for blows. Eventually the fog lifted and we found ourselves in the midst of many massive schools of bunker. Here we encountered feeding humpback whales. Two…

Friday, August 30, 2019 A Beautiful Day with Whales all Around   Today was a sunny , beautiful day as we set out again in search of whales.  We only had to round Montauk Point and cruise along the south shore for 40 minutes before seeing our first whale blowing.  This turned out to be a humpback whale, in very shallow water (50 feet) making shallow feeding dives.  The water was literally teeming with giant schools of bait fish, menhaden, at the surface.  The whale was only going down for a bit over 2 minutes as it’s food was right at the surface. Within a half hour we spotted several other blows and investigated.  We watched these other 4 humpbacks feeding on and off for the rest of the afternoon. Looking towards the beach we saw a pair of whales…