I I did a Long Island “End-to-End” Whale Watching trip here on Long Island. Wednesday Sept 4th, I went to Montauk to do a CRESLI Whale Watch. The next day Thursday Sept 5th I went to Brooklyn on the American Princess with Gotham Whale. YES…an End-to-End Whale Watch, it is a thing! YES, Brooklyn is on LI, just as much as Montauk is on LI. 
Wednesday Sept 4th, I went out on the CRESLI Viking Fleet whale watch. The sea conditions – near perfect! NE winds around 5 kt, becoming E around 5 kt late. Seas around 1 ft. Wave Detail: SE 1 ft at 7 seconds and SE 1 ft at 10 seconds. A flat ocean which at times was like glass and 73 degrees air temp. It was a top ten day on LI!
The Viking pushed off, Artie Kopelman, CRESLI was on board as naturalist and Maestro, and he knocked it out of the park! Artie mentioned this was the best year for whale watching to date. With 134 different identifiable humpbacks. Montauk was on fire this year with whales, this day was no different. We headed out and came around the light house and Camp Hero, THE END of Long Island. We were on our first whale quickly; it was a Humpback, and it was a juvenile. We are not with the whale for a minute, and it does a spectacular breach 50ft from the boat. Wow, the sound of the impact was impressive, and the splash was gigantic. It only did one, then the whale went back to sub-surface feeding. We moved on from the solo whale that was off the beach and headed 12-14miles off of Montauk. That is where we came across hundreds of boats and in the mix of fishing boats were the whales. This is where the action was! It was an impressive sight to see, anywhere you looked there were whales. In the mix of whales were a few calves with their mothers, a few juvenile whales, and the big boys (which were probably females). These were not the small whales that I normally see. These were the big, fully grown adults and they were everywhere. We got synchronized swimming, diving, feeding and I guess playing. Because of the weather conditions the blows just hung in the air forever! No lunge feedings or any crazy acrobatics, but we did see three breaches this trip. One very close and two others far away. One whale took a nap (logging) by the boat. It just stayed at the surface 30-50 feet from the boat for a good 15-20 minutes. We headed in and saw a small pod of Dolphins in almost the same spot (GPS) we saw the breaching humpback on the way out. We stayed for a few shots and started the hour and a half ride into the dock. A very nice trip with 20 dolphins and 20-30 Humpbacks seen. 
A big thank you to CRESLI’s Artie Kopelman and his band of Volunteers along with the captain and crew of the Viking Starship for safe and amazing whale watch. Try to get out to Montauk and get on this whale watch before they shut down on Sept 18th. 

Thursday Sept 5th, I went to Brooklyn to go on the American Princess with Gotham Whale. The sea conditions – NE winds 10 to 15 kt with gusts up to 20 kt. Seas 4 to 5 ft, occasionally to 6 ft. Wave Detail: SE 5 ft at 9 seconds. Air temp 73. WOW what a difference a day makes, it was choppy!
We pushed out of sheepshead bay made the turn around the Breezy Point Jetty, THE other END of Long Island and made our way east. Capt. Tom at the helm with Capt. Jack, Christine and Kim working the boat and tending to the customers. It did not take long to see our first whale and it was an epic first encounter, we were greeted with a massive breach. Matter of fact if we did not see the breach and massive splash, we might have passed the whale. The whale did a few more breaches and started to subsurface feed. The Bunker was not snapping on the surface, but you could still see the groups of bunkers in the water, but they were 5-10 feet under the water. There were other blows seen but we stayed with this whale. It was zigzagging all around the boat dealing with the choppy sea. The whale was Very very close at times and actually went directly under the boat. And popped up on the other side half under the boat and half not. The whale did some cool moves like it kept sticking its rostrum (the upper jaw or snout of a whale). We were talking about if the whale was doing a very low to the water spy hop, maybe, but do not know. The seas were getting bigger, the whale started to rest, and we went on our way. 
Had a great trip out on the AP with Gotham Whale we saw one humpback. A big thank you to the Capt. Tom and Capt. Frank and the crew of the American Princess for a safe and amazing whale watch. Try to get out to Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay and get on this whale watch before they shut down in Mid-November.