Whale Watching

With the sun shining, a light, cool breeze, and nearly unlimited visibility, it was a perfect summer’s day for a whale watch. Under ideal sea and atmospheric conditions, we had our first signs of cetacean life, the tell-tale signs of a distant blow, approximately an hour after passing the lighthouse. We expertly followed the spout and waited for the whale, a mature finback, to surface. Typically, with fin whales, their speed, and long breath-holding times keep us a good distance away, but yesterday’s trip was an exception. This whale would surface, at first about 100-150 yards from our vessel, increasingly getting closer as we waited safely out of gear. Close approaches by fin whales are rare, but passengers got exceptional views as this whale, likely feeding on the dense patches of bait near the surface, appeared repeatedly around the vessel….

Another challenging yet successful trip with whales and dolphins. We headed out again to ostensibly cool off while looking for marine mammals. The relatively cooler water helped to curtain some of the brutal conditions and made things more comfortable than on land.  We had multiple reports of whales to the south and decided to head that way. As we traveled, we found a few pelagic birds and the numbers increased moderately, Cory’s shearwaters, then great shearwaters, and Wilson’s storm petrels. Eventually, we saw a humpback whale dive tdovetabout 350 yards ahead of us. This was a large individual, but the prey was in the upper 1/3 of the water column so the whale undertook a shallow, non-fiuking dive. We waited for the whale to resurface, but in the haze we must have missed it and after 15 minutes headed on….

A long, but utterly unique and successful trip with finback whale mom and calf, and some dolphins! We travelled to an area that is one of the major whale feeding areas off Montauk and found nothing. We continued ENE for a while and turned to head back on a more northerly route, and then we saw the massive blow of an adult finback whale, and a faint blow of her calf! This is a new finback whale mom/calf pair for us, and what a pair it was! The calf kept swimming under and around our bow, then mom came up close to us. We were being “mugged” by both whales. These whales stayed so close to us that we could not move. Doing this for nearly 4 decades, I (Dr. Artie Kopelman, CRESLI president and senior scientist) have never seen…

Yesterday’s trip was punctuated with sightings from the start, and not limited to cetaceans. Our first-of- the-season sighting of bunker (Atlantic menhaden), an extremely important prey fish for a myriad of marine predators, kicked off our departure past the lighthouse. And not surprisingly, shortly thereafter, we encountered a large pod of Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphin. The pod was separated into two distinct groups, each consisting of tightly-packed individuals including adults, juveniles, and a few neonates (newborns) diving and surfacing together, with occasional tail slaps on the surface. While the sighting was invigorating, we decided to use our time wisely and continue east where baleen whales were seen on previous trips. As we transited, the sea boiled almost continuously with bait fish and occasional tuna, before the largest thing of all broke the surface behind us: a submarine! A possible spinner shark…

A challenging but successful day! We left the dock expecting to escape from the heat and we did. We encountered wind and expected 4-5′ seas. We found a pod of about 20-10 Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins about 1.5 nautical miles from Montauk Point. We then headed ESE, experiencing the classic “old-time rock-and- roll” of 4-5′ seas for a few hours. We traveled through the area in which we’d found whales, dolphins, and pelagic birds on Monday 7/33/25. Spotting blows at distance was challenging due to all the white caps, and the wind, and waves. We searched and traveled and then at about 20 nm out, a finback whale blew 100 yards ahead of us! We could see the blows  (3 or 4 a few seconds apart, and the whale would go down for a terminal dive of 5-10 minutes, then come…

What better way to celebrate World Whale and Dolphin Day than aboard another magical Viking/CRESLI whale watch! Our transit yesterday brought us southeast towards an area we dubbed “cetacean heaven” on Sunday’s trip. At first, it appeared as if the bait and the whales/dolphins had moved on with zero bird activity and no sign of life near the surface. That changed as we reached an area markedly noisier than before. Here, hundreds of great shearwaters and terns patrolled the area and we encountered our first pod of short-beaked common dolphin. The dolphins were acrobatic and inquisitive, swimming around our vessel with repeated close approaches to the delight of those onboard. Shortly after, a series of blows were observed and investigated, while repeated large splashing events occurred just beyond them. The blows belonged to at least one finback whale, while a…

Sunday, July 20, 2025 It was absolute cetacean heaven at sea yesterday! We headed offshore, pausing only briefly to investigate some nearshore splashes and visible leaps, likely belonging to tuna and/or other large, predatory fish. Our transit was speckled with pelagic bird sightings, at times by the hundreds, before we encountered our first whale, a…

It was a beautiful day on the water yesterday with a refreshing breeze and cooler temperatures than those experienced earlier in the week. The whales were around and we found our first – a humpback about seven miles off Montauk. This whale was spending long intervals beneath the surface and popping up only briefly 200-300 yards away, making for a difficult encounter. We decided to continue in hopes of finding another individual, which we did, just ahead of the first. This whale, however, was also exhibiting long dive times and surfacing far away from the vessel and after photographic investigation post-trip, turned out to be the same individual as previously encountered. With little bait detected in the area, it is likely this whale was traveling (and quickly at that) in search of food. While quite natural an observation, we realize…

A spectacular afternoon with an interesting and well-known humpback whale and loads of dolphins! On a brutally warm and muggy day on land, we were all ready for a cooler day at sea. We headed towards the area where we’d been seeing dense patches of prey, birds, and cetaceans for the past week. The prey,…

This was a tremendous and memorable trip! We started out toward an area with heavy bait and numerous reports of cetacean activity. En route, we encountered a juvenile humpback whale that was spending brief intervals at the surface, just enough to give everyone a quick look, before we decided to move on. Within a few…