Whale Watching

*Last trips of the season coming up! Sat Sept 6 – SOLD OUT!, Sun Sept 7 & Mon Sept 8 SPECTACULAR TRIP – 4 species of cetaceans! A calm, crystal clear, beautiful day. We had unlimited visibility, relatively calm seas, and were able to find whales and dolphins. We passed through several hundreds of Great and Cory’s shearwaters sitting on the surface near the Lighthouse and headed ESE towards one of our well known dolphin areas and readily found a small group. While viewing a small group of Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphin (6-12), we saw a faint blow  0.2 miles ahead. This was a humpback whale, a small one with horrendous propeller scars across the remnants of it’s dorsal fin – another whale hit by a vessel. This was was spending long times down, most likely feeding on the sand eels…

It was a beautifully crisp day as we sailed into September aboard the Viking Starship yesterday. We decided to head west after finding no whales or dolphins to the east on the previous trip. The nearshore environment has been rich with schools of bunker and scores of pelagic birds over the last few weeks, even as the effects of Hurricane Erin passing offshore have been felt elsewhere in the region. We encountered rafts of Cory’s and great shearwaters, likely resting with full bellies, from a previous feast, and enjoyed their characteristic gliding above the water as we continued out transit west. After a short while, a small pod of Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins were seen, if only for a fleeting moment. We waited and watched as they appeared one more time, before continuing on. Eventually, with no whales spotted nearshore, we…

You couldn’t have asked for a better late August day. We had unlimited visibility, clear skies, sun, and enough cool wind to keep those in the shade needing additional layers. We had no reports of whales or dolphins, and decided on a course that would take us through several areas that had been productive recently. We briefly caught glimpses of dolphins, and had several encounters with phantom ‘blows,’ but nothing substantial materialized. While we saw sporadic clusters of pelagic birds and prey, it wasn’t until late in the trip that we found areas with significant prey densities throughout the water column, but still no cetaceans. 19 Wilson’s storm petrels 60 Cory’s (with perhaps 1 Scopoli’s shearwaters (see https://ebird.org/checklist/S270846932) 30 Great shearwaters 8-10 Manx shearwaters

Another special day on the water with dolphins, whales, and cold winds   If you were itching to escape the heat and spend you time looking for dolphins and whales, Friday August 29, was your day. While we’d been traveling east for the past few weeks and finding whales, the presence of Atlantic menhaden in the near shore waters, as well as the mixing in response to Hurricane Erin has changed our potential searching paradigms. We had reports of humpbacks being in the nearshore waters and went to explore.  First we found a group 60-70 Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins in addition to a few pelagic birds (Cory’s shearwaters and an occasional Wilson’s storm petrel and Great shearwater. We continued westward and our Senior Naturalist/Scientist, Dr. Artie Kopelman, saw the splash of a massive whale breach miles ahead. We never found the…

As August (and soon summer) draws to a close, we could not have asked for a better day to explore Long Island’s marine ecosystem. With unlimited visibility, blue skies, and a crisp breeze, it was a privilege to head west along Long Island’s east end searching for marine life. Pelagic bird sightings were limited at first, but began to pick up with numerous Cory’s and great shearwaters observed gliding over a calm sea. A small pod of Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins were spotted about two miles from shore and we spent some time with them before moving on to a second, larger pod to their west. We continued on for a bit and decided to move south in our search. About five miles out, we encountered a series of splashes belonging to a much larger group of Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins, which…

With summer vacation soon ending, the mood onboard the Viking Starship yesterday was excited and joyful as we left the dock under beautiful blue skies, a light breeze, and unlimited visibility. We sailed passed historic Camp Hero and Montauk Point Lighthouse before finding numerous schools of bunker, visible as dark patches at the surface. Here, hundreds of shearwaters (primarily Cory’s and great) flew, fed, and rested with full bellies at the surface. The fish and bird life continued for the first couple of miles of our journey as we sailed southeast towards productive waters where cetaceans (whales and dolphins) were seen in abundance on previous trips. The unlimited visibility provided excellent views of Fire Island, and the bow was full of families and friends enjoying the voyage. To our surprise, despite its beauty and an abundance of bait detected by…

Not wanting to repeated the previous day’s effoprts, we headed out to investigate several different whale spotting territories and had success The conditions were excellent, the visibility was limitted to around 5 miles at first, but opened up to at least 14 miles. We headed south soon found a scalloped hammerhead shark and a few pelagic (open ocean) birds, before we eventually found two humpback whales in an area where the depth was 125′ and their prey (most likely sand eels) were patchily distributed on the sea floor. One whale was ahead of us and one on our stern, Both dove several times before any photos were taken, both stayed down for anywhere from 8-15 minutes. After the “last” dive was at 15:00 minutes long and counting, and we’d unseccessful in getting photo ID’s, and had been with these whales for 27 minutes,…

Only two days after Hurricane Erin stirred up nearly 20-ft seas off Montauk, we headed off unsure of what we may or may not encounter. Shortly after steaming beyond the inlet, we encountered a small pod of Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphin, a species we typically find much closer to the open ocean beyond the Point. We continued on after a short stop and found a humpback whale just a couple of miles southwest of Camp Hero State Park. We spent time with this whale, a juvenile, which would surface every three to four minutes, likely feeding on bait detected near the bottom. We eventually headed east where humpback and finback whales were spotted the day prior. Almost immediately, more Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins were spotted, in small groups at first, not exceeding 20-30 individuals per pod. This continued for a few miles…

We headed out after the effects of Hurricane Erin were settling down. Often after these kinds of events, we are sure what might become of the whales’ prey and the whales. We decided to head towards where we had been finding whales over the past few weeks. We were pleasantly surprised by finding whales significantly closer than we expected. At first we saw the characteristic towering blows of finback whales, a mom and her calf. After a while, we headed towards a nearby pair of humpback whales, also a mom and her calf. In both cases always a special treat to see. The humpbacks could be seen open-mouth feeding and filtering – again, always a pleasure to see, whether you’re a newbie or have been at it for nearly 4 decades. We ended the trip while looking at our 5th…

Another successful trip with 5 species of cetaceans and a loggerhead sea turtle! A rich diversity of marine mammals and sea turtles were seen during today’s trip on the Viking Starship. The capacity crowd got to see things that many had never seen before. We headed to the same area where we’ve been seeing whales and…