Interesting situation on this whale watch. We met up with a Humpback that was seen a few times the week before documented by the Captain John charter boat. The whale was feeding off of Annadale, Staten Island directly in front of Wolfes Pond Park and Seguine Point. BTW - That's really deep into Raritan bay and not a normal occurrence. The Big Humpback was moving back and forth from the shallows to the deep shipping channel finding food. It was doing these low on the water lunge feedings, not once showing us its fluke. Along with some slow feeding behavior where it came up slowly with its mouth open filtering out some really small fish. From my experience sea birds rarely give away the location of a whale, today the birds were all over the humpback. I though the birds were actually going after the humpback but when I got home and I looked at the photos in detail. The Humpback was feeding on schools of Peanut Bunker AKA juvenile menhaden that are an inch or two long. They were so small I didn't even see these little fish jumping out of the way when the Humpbacks was feeding! Yes, we see this almost every trip, bunker flying out of the mouths of Humpbacks as they are feeding but never on Peanut Bunker!
© Artie Raslich Photography