A very good day on the American Princess Cruises today! 4 whales, a few large cownose rays and 200+ dolphins seen.

The sea conditions were very good with light winds around 5 kts, seas around 2 ft, no chop. Bright sunshine, cloud cover 0%, 83 degrees with low humidity, just a perfect day for a whale watch.

We headed out of lower NY Bay past Breezy Point Inlet and came upon a pod of Dolphins. They were feeding on small Bunker bait balls. We usually don’t get to see the Dolphins ripping through the bait balls. I mean – we could actually see the dolphins corralling the Menhaden deep in the water, then running at and through the Bait balls feeding. That was cool.

The dolphins once again brought us to the humpbacks today. The whales and dolphins were in the same area and the whales were feeding also. We came upon the first whale, then there were two, then four. We motored past a lazy whale to meetup with the active whale and it gave us a show. This whale was not shy! He or she liked to get close and had no preference to the front or the back, this whale was everywhere and unpredictable. As always, the AP adheres to Whale watching protocols, the whales and the passengers are always safe. The whale was lunge feeding as we approached but stopped and went into a Pectoral slap session with a few twists and turns. It was nice to see the whale up close and some of those pectoral slaps were very loud.

The whale did many big blows or spouts, it looks like rain on the water’s surface. It also creates a very fine mist and this mist drifts down wind or the boat can drive through the blow. “Sometimes” when a whale takes a breath of air (blow or spout) its exhaled breath can be unbelievably stinky! The smell – think of a covered bucket with Bunker fish in it that sat in the sun, decomposing for a week. Now open that bucket and give it a whiff…THAT’S THE SMELL of whale’s breath. I have been out on my boat and found whales on their breath alone…truth! Good news for us today, the whales blow, or whales’ breath didn’t smell at all. A small kid next to me says “why did I just get rained on?” I said” That’s the whales’ breath, its it blow”. I thought to myself "Man, if that whales breath was bad and I told the kid what it was that was misting on him, he would have freaked Haha"

Whales are in NYC waters get out on the AP and see what I see!