Sunday, October 22nd, my sisters wanted to do a whale watch and what a perfect day for it! Bright sunshine, 75 degrees, very light winds and ocean conditions were flat and glassy.

Went out of ER inlet and we got on a whale quick. It was a lazy whale, going at its own speed and passing on some serious bunker pods, this whale was in sleep mode or it must have just eaten. I gave it some room as we ate our breakfast.

Time went by, breakfast was eaten and the whale we had our eyes on started to wake up, getting more active by the minute. When it did its first lunge feeding, it was game on.

We were in the middle of a large bunker pod, and I see the whale has turned towards the boat. I said, OK…don’t freak out BUT this whale will get close. I can’t move the boat, we need to stay where we are and let this whale do its thing. The whale was under the water on the left side of the boat 5 feet away. The bunker were nervous, in a boil and jumping like crazy! I was expecting a giant 45ft whale to blast out of the water doing a lunge feeding right then and there but it didn’t happen? I laughed and said, this whale is directly under the boat he should come up on the right! AND BOOM! The bunker boiled up and out trying to get away from the whale's mouth. The 45ft whale lunges out of the water, mouth wide open throwing bunker and water everywhere! Wow that was close, so close I couldn’t get the shot! The whale moved away and did another lunge feeding 15 ft. from the boat, this one I got the shot of.

  We followed the whale as it sporadically did some awesome lunge feedings for us. The whale slowed down, and Patti and Judy wanted to see some dolphins, so we left and looked for dolphins.

We went onto the beach and met up with about 30 Inshore Bottlenose Dolphins, they were great to see but they were not really interested in us, and they moved away quickly. I did hear on the radio that there was a breaching whale in the area so we left the dolphins to find that breaching whale.

Not even minutes away from the dolphins on the beach we spot a whale in transit. This is not the breaching whale but another humpback, yeah we have lots of Humpbacks around. 

The whale we just met up with kept fluking and showing us its tail. I got a few good shots and looked at the photos, I didn’t know this whale. Now, this is good, I have a whale I am not familiar with right in front of me and it's showing its fluke. We followed the humpback respectfully, it was in motion and not feeding. In following the whale, it brought us right to the inlet, but I didn’t not get a perfect fluke shot. Still following the whale, it dove and shown us its full fluke and I grabbed a photo. I looked at the fluke on the camera and it’s a good one, and now we can leave this whale and go in. This fluke will go into the NYC Humpback Whale Catalog as #NYC0069, the newest addition.

As I turn to say let’s go, I see we have many dolphins on the beach right in front of us and ask, do you guys want to go see them? They said yes, and we met up with the dolphins!

This was one of the most awesome interaction of Inshore Bottlenose Dolphins I have personally ever had!! In the pod were very playful calves, juvenile and adults. They were not skittish at all and were interested in the boat and came in close. There was jumping and roughhousing, and I shot one of my favorite dolphin photos to date. They stayed right next to us having a great time, playing for a good 10 minutes. It was time to go, we said our goodbyes and left the area to go back home.

Today was a very successful whale watch! 100+ Dolphins and 3 Humpbacks seen. The first Humpback was NYC0040, the second was a newly numbered whale NYC0069, the third whale we just saw its blows.