Posted on 08/31/2018 7:56:40 AM PDT by ETL
I was at Rockaway Beach yesterday in Queens, NY, sitting and watching the water, when, several hundred feet or so offshore, I spot what appeared to be a fin poking out of the water. I thought at first it might just be a piece of trash floating on the surface, but then several more appear. Looking around I noticed other fins a hundred or so feet behind the first group. The more I looked the more I saw. They continued passing for about 20 mins. Turned out to be a large pod of Dolphins. Probably hundreds of them.
Strange, but I've been coming to the Rockaways since around 1970 and never once saw anything like this. And I'm a pretty observant person. And even if I missed it myself, I surely would have noticed others pointing and looking. I've seen, on occasion, an isolated fin, one such time reported to be a seal. Anyway, it was an incredible and totally unexpected experience that I won't ever forget, seeing so many together. Really made my day.
An hour and a half from Midtown, off Jacob Riis Landing in the Rockaways, is a modern-day Ahab.
“Rockaways is the new Cape Cod for whale watching,” says Capt. Tom Paladino, steely blue eyes scanning the camera-toting crowd boarding his American Princess cruise ship. “I’ll see them before people will see them.”
“Them” refers to North Atlantic humpback whales, 52-foot-long sea creatures that summer just beyond Coney Island.
Six years ago, after Paladino spotted more and more of them on runs between Manhattan and the Rockaways, he launched his whale- and dolphin-watching enterprise: four-hour tours that set off three days a week in summer — peak humpback whale-spotting season.
While whales within subway reach of NYC suggest a scene from “Sharknado,” onboard naturalist Catherine Granton — a member of the local Gotham Whale research group — says the big mammals have long ruled these seas.
“If you look at hand-drawn maps of New York Harbor during the 1700s, whales were all over this area,” she says. “It’s just that they were hunted to the point of extinction. Now their numbers are beginning to return.”
Thanks to fishery management, reduced boat speeds and climate change, more humpback whales are making the trek each year from their warm winters off the Dominican Republic to summer here. Their populations have grown so much that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has proposed removing them from its endangered-species list.
As someone raised on Raffi’s “Baby Beluga” who’d yet to see any whales outside of SeaWorld, I had to check it out.
I wasn’t alone.
There are 150 others aboard the American Princess this particular day, including Melissa Gold of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, who dragged her friends with her on the L and A trains to celebrate her 27th birthday at sea.
“I believe everyone has a spirit animal,” she says, clutching her gold whale earrings, “and mine is the humpback whale.”
But this day, her spirit animal is feeling shy.
“A lot of whale-watching is about patience,” Capt. Paladino assures the antsy crowd as an hour elapses with nary a fin in sight. “Look for splashes.”
We look. Then some of us hit the bar for $5 beers.
Meanwhile, Gold turns green and pops ginger candies into her mouth to fight motion sickness. Others begin to nod off.
And then, nearly four hours into our cruise and on the open waters of the Atlantic, we see one.
“Eleven o’clock!” Paladino shouts over the loudspeaker.
We all sprint to the port side to see the whale’s fin and tail flick through the water.
“That’s a humpback whale!” confirms Granton, our (relieved-sounding) naturalist.
For 20 minutes, we snap away as the creature dives up and down. Not the perfect Instagram moment as advertised on the tour’s Facebook page — a breaching humpback whale perfectly aligned with the Empire State Building — but still worthy of a ’gram.
I Uber back to the city feeling wide-eyed and rejuvenated — but not quite ready to deal with the motion of the subway. True, I haven’t gotten up close and personal with a breaching “Baby Beluga.”
But four hours in the ocean air scanning the Atlantic instead of my Twitter feed seems like a whale of a good time to me.
https://nypost.com/2015/07/11/yes-you-can-go-whale-watching-in-the-rockaways/
Well, the Football season is underway...................
Man-made global warming is the answer to everything.
A dead humpback whale was found washed up on the sand along Rockaway Beach in Queens Tuesday morning, officials said.
The roughly 30-foot mammal was discovered lying on its back near Beach 117th St. sometime before 7 a.m., witnesses and officials said.
“I’ve never seen a whale up close,” said Thomas Koti, 38, the super of a nearby building. “I was surprised at how big it was.”
Parks Department workers set up a cordon around the whale, a male believed to be about two years old, to prevent the growing crowd of onlookers from getting too close.
Experts from the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society arrived on the scene to help coordinate the whale’s necropsy and removal.
It’s already proven to be a whale of a task.
Volunteer biologists, joined by members of the FDNY, succeeded in tying the humpback’s tail to a tractor to prevent it from floating away.
But the massive sea creature proved too large to move it further onshore.
“We’re waiting for a bigger piece of equipment to help us move it,” said Kim Durham, the Atlantic Marine’s necropsy program coordinator. “The whale is too heavy and the sand is too soft.”
The whale was spotted by the Coast Guard Monday night floating nine miles off shore.
Durham said it could have died from disease or damage it suffered in a boat strike.
To unlock the mystery, Durham and others will roll the whale on its side, cut away the blubber and skin, and then start pulling out its organs.
They’ll carefully exam its stomach, intestines, heart and lungs.
“This was a young animal but we could have indications of disease or something like that, which we’ll want to investigate,” Durham said.
The process, expected to begin Wednesday morning, could take several hours.
Once it’s completed, workers will dig a deep trench in the sand in what will become the whale’s final resting place.
“We’ll be able to get it done, so that it won’t resurface,” Durham said. “It’ll be a one-way ticket.”
Humpback whales are often spotted in the waters off New York. The creatures can grow to up to 60 feet and weigh 40 tons.
“Someone was saying this might just be a baby,” Koti said. “I’d like to know how big the mother was.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/queens/dead-whale-washes-ashore-rockaway-beach-article-1.3018650#
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Probably due to climate change, or Trump.
They were lost. They were probably looking for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I hope you gave them a good directions.
Saw them out fishing out of Belmar NJ. Just south of you.
Back in 79 there was a far from home Beluga whale that was fishing Fire Island inlet. The press named her Bella. Saw her while fishing there a few times. She was more successful at getting fish than me.
The Met? It's right over there...
HIGHLANDS, N.J. (CBSNewYork/AP) — Three young beluga whales have surfaced in two rivers along the New Jersey shore.
They are believed to be the same whales that appeared off Rhode Island on Mother’s Day and in Long Island waters over the Memorial Day weekend.
“There were two white things coming up,” said Barley Point resident James Caracappa. “I thought they were plastic. Then they started spouting.”
The whales spent time in the Shrewsbury and Navesink rivers at the northern end of the shore.
Police Chief Scott Paterson said he has lived here is entire life and has never heard of a whale in the river.
Marine Mammal Stranding Center director Bob Schoelkopf tells the Asbury Park Press the rivers can become death traps for whales and dolphins because their headwaters become un-navigable.
Why? Because Beluga whales are cold water mammals who live in the arctic and subarctic and don’t belong here, CBS2’s Vanessa Murdock reports. Nor do they belong in Long Island waters where the same group of whales were spotted last week.
Schoelkopf hopes the recent heavy rainfall will lower the salinity in the rivers and the whales will return to sea.
Marine Biologist Jennifer Lengares from Jenkinson’s Aquarium said the whales getting caught along the Jersey Shore with summer closing in could be their downfall.
“My concern is as summer comes, the water warms, they may overheat and suffer from heat stress,” Lengares said. She adds that it’s hard for marine animals to get out of rivers once they get in.
So if you’re nearby and gazing upon the Shrewsbury or Navesink, it’s possible you too might witness the unbelievable — Beluga whales swimming just off the river bank.
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2015/06/03/beluga-whales-new-jersey-shore/
While I was deployed in ‘95, somewhere in the pacific, I saw dolphins.
Lots of dolphins.
In naval terminology, from bearing 270 to 020, from the bow of my ship to the horizon, nothing but dolphins.
When people tell me that dolphins are endangered, I laugh in their faces.
Used to see orca off the Atlantic Highlands chasing mackeral and herring during the spring runs in the late 80s and early 90s.
those aren’t dolphins, they are great white sharks in drag
Yeah, but Queens is just a Subway ride away from Manhattan! But then it is of course still the Atlantic Ocean, so I suppose darn near anything can on occasion show up there.
Lucky you.
Beautiful beaches there.
.
They are there a few weeks early, the Jets-Dolphins game is on September 16th.
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