By Dr. Artie Kopelman

Another great whale watch trip last week.  Humpbacks, bottlenose dolphins, fin whale, and more!

We started the day with a plan to head about 15 nautical miles from Montauk, where whales had been seen the day before. As we passed Montauk Lighthouse we received a report of dolphins and a whale about 3 miles from our location. So, we headed there and a few miles later found our first humpback of the 2017 season, a young and active whale. There were about 200 inshore bottlenose dolphins, including many young ones swimming and feeding in the same area. This young whale surprised us all by doing a beautiful full body rotating breach. After 40 minutes and 4 miles with these animals, we headed further offshore to find more whales. 6 miles later we found another young humpback, and 15 miles after that, a massive finback whale. Throughout the trip we encountered various fish, from an ocean sunfish to a hammerhead shark. We also found quite a lot of pelagic birds.

Totals:
2 Humpback whales
1 Fin whale
1 Ocean sunfish
1 Hammerhead shark
200 Bottlenose dolphins (inshore population)
15 Cory’s shearwaters
10 Great shearwaters
1 Sooty shearwater
300 Wilson’s storm petrels
1 Northern Gannet (immature)

Go to the CRESLI 2017-07-16 photo-page for additional images.

Check out a special update from our two day trip to the Great Channel on page 3!

There are still openings for tomorrow’s Montauk Whale Watch, click here for details and reservations!

 

Inshore bottlenose dolphins

Subset of 200 Inshore bottlenose dolphins encountered

Humpback Whale

Fin whale

Humpback Whale

Humpback | Scarred and sloughing skin

Humpback | Scarred and sloughing skin

More images and a great video on page 2!