By Mike Busch 12-27-19
I picked up my first drone exactly 3 years ago and am still blown away by the opportunities the freedom of flight and altitude provide. Everything seems to look better from the air, but I think my favorite thing to shoot is marine life from above. It provides the opportunity to see things that probably have never been witnessed by humans before drones came into existence. You get the chance to vary altitude from 4 to 400 feet, freedom even helicopters can’t even pull off. Wind and waves add to the thrill factor. Just bringing the drone back safely to a pitching boat deck is always a great feeling. One of the coolest things is going back through footage of bunker schools and finding Striped Bass or Dolphin feeding inside the pod.
During a bout of insomnia, I went back and make a compilation video of some of my favorite clips off Long Island over Bunker, Humpback Whales, Striped Bass, and a few Bottlenose Dolphins along with some photos. Most of the footage was taken between Moriches and Inlet and Davis Park. The whale footage was filmed from my friend Paul Peluso’s boat in October 2017, thanks Paul! We were lucky enough to follow a pair of tandem Humpbacks that day as they gorged on bunker together. I got lucky and happened to film them launch out of the water together through a school of bunker.
