Whale Watching

Humpback whales, sea turtle, and sunfish! What a special day we had – our first humpbacks of the season. The day was sunny, breezy, and chilly enough in the shade to make most of us wear sweatshirts, in other words a welcomed relief from the heat and humidity. We heard reports of whales off the Nappeague stretch, as well as further offshore. The NE winds helped us decide to head westward and we found whales off Ditch Plains. We first encountered a really small humpback, perhaps a calf or yearling. It was busy with searching for food on extremely long submersions. Later a larger humpback appeared and we stayed with it long enough to get excellent fluke shots and see some typical humpback behaviors. As we followed this whale to eastward for several miles, while doing so we had a…

A Big Minke Day Today’s Viking Fleet/CRESLI Whale watch started off with a dramatic fog bank that sweep over our boat as we were leaving the Montauk area.  The thick fog soon fell away and we progressed through calm seas and sunny blue skies for the rest of the day. After reaching a point about 12 miles from Montauk point we encountered the first of the Minke whales.  They were apparently feeding on the thick schools of small fish below us.  The adults and children aboard got many looks at these small baleen whales as they spent time around the boat.  We continued along at a leisurely pace and stopped several times as we encountered several small groups that day, for a total of 12 whales seen. Many small seabirds, Wilson’s Storm Petrels, where dipping into the seas around us…

We started out just where we left off, still finding cetaceans on every trip – ~70 short-beaked common dolphins.   What a gorgeous day to be on the water. While it took sometime before we found interesting animals, we did indeed find all kinds of critters. A small basking shark was our first aquatic vertebrate…

Sun Sept 2 2 whales, 2 different species! We had perfect conditions, unlimited visibility, 2 feet seas, and clear skies. We headed towards whales that had been seen earlier, but saw none.  We headed through the areas where we had been seeing whales all summer and saw none, unfortunately.  We started to turn towards Montauk and a Minke whale popped up right in front of us.  It surfaced a bunch of times and allowed many people to view it, albeit briefly. We continued back towards Montauk and at 6:30, we saw the high billowing blow of a larger whale. We found a 1.5-2-year old Humpback that we had seen on 8/8/18 (nearly 1 month earlier and about 5 nautical miles SSW), Scylla’s 2016 calf. We spent a while with this whale, but had to leave – we were late enough…

Wed Aug 29 Whales throughout the day! We had  another spectacular day.  We began the trip by surveying an area SW of Montauk where whales have been consistently spotted.  The day started slowly until we spotted several huge bait balls of small fish at the surface. We immediately spotted several Minke Whales. Typically for Minkes they would briefly surface than disappear. A good sized Hammerhead Shark cruised within an arms length of the boat to the excitement of some of our younger passengers.  We saw a few blows in the area and soon a large Fin Whale crossed directly in front of our bow and treated us to a thrilling view.  The activity picked up as several Humpbacks of various ages were also feeding in the area and we spent considerable time with them. As we started to return to…

Sunday Aug 26 Whale watching Humpbacks, Fin whales, and Minke whales again Our 21st consecutive trip with whales started with a breaching humpback near Montauk.  This young humpback, like so many others showed signs of entanglement.  We headed to another area (about 11 nm out) where we found 2 whales that we believe were fin whales, but couldn’t get good enough views to confirm absolutely. On our way back in, we found another breaching, flipper slapping humpback and a minke whale. Totals 2 Humpback Whales 2 Fin whales 1 Minke whale 12 Cory’s Shearwaters 1 Scopoli’s Shearwater 4 Great Shearwaters

Wed Aug 22 Crazy Breaching Young Humpback Our streak of successfully finding whales continues (12 consecutive trips in 2018, 8 in 2017); 122 out of 132 trips since 2009 (92.42%). This trip brought us westward and we found a young humpback breaching like crazy.  From afar, we saw 5 breaches – later when nearer this…

Wednesday August 8, 2018 7 Humpbacks and 1 Fin Whale! We found whales again.  As usual, when it’s warm on land, we were glad to get offshore, but it was still pretty warm. We didn’t have to go far to find our first whales – 2 humpbacks, a mom and her calf.  The mom had…

Whale Watching 5 Species of dolphins and whales!! Another successful Viking Fleet/CRESLI whale watch on the Viking Starship! This time, we were able to find finback whales, minke whales, and humpback whales, as well as bottlenose dolphins  and short-beaked common dolphins – 5 different species! The whales were spending long times down feeding near the…

Sunday, July 29, 2018 4 Cetacean Species Day! Well we found them again. Finback whales, minke whales, humpback whales, and short-beaked common dolphins. The whales weren’t particularly “cooperative,” spending long times down feeding near the sea floor, but they are there to feed. We found 5 finback whales including 2 mom/calf pairs, 5 humpbacks, 2 minkes whales, and about 150 dolphins. The dolphin rode our bow wake and rode the bow wakes of some of the fin whales. Birders on board were happy to find loads of pelagic birds too. Totals: 5 finback whale 5 humpback whales 2 minke whales 150 short-beaked common dolphins 125 Cory’s shearwaters 55 Great shearwaters 20 Sooty shearwaters 4 Manx shearwaters 7 Parasitic jaegers 1 immature Northern gannet