Whale Watching

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…

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….