We met our guide at 9:00 am Saturday morning at the Shelter Island Marina. She informed us that the other two people who signed up weren't going to make it so it was just us two. AWESOME!!! The thing with whale watching is it's kind of a gamble. Maybe you'll see something and maybe you won't. You can't force nature to come and out play if nature doesn't want to. So B and I went into it with the attitude that if we don't see anything, then at least we will get the opportunity to be out on the ocean which is something we don't get to do being landlocked in Utah.
As we went out, our guide told us about her past experience as a whale watching guide. We were in the off season for the Gray Whale migration, but she did say that there were other whales in the area that we had a good chance of seeing...one being the Blue Whale, which happens to be the largest mammal living on the earth.
So as we went out, we had seen a few pods of dolphins. But they happened to be feeding and weren't super interested in playing with our boat. She had a friend from a different tour company out giving a tour that morning as well. We got a call from him over the radio that he had a Fin Whale in sight and gave us the coordinates to where he was at. We had no idea that when we got there, we would be coming across an EPIC whale watching experience. When we arrived we immediately saw whale spouts everywhere, fins coming out of the water and whale breaching the surface. There were approximately a dozen different Fin Whales, Minke Whales and Blue Whales surface feeding on krill in the area. It was an incredible, once in a lifetime opportunity to see this, especially the blue whales. They are so rare and are hardly seen. So to be in the right place at the right time and see this whole situation was incredible. Even our guide, who had been doing this for 20 years didn't want to leave. She just kept telling us how lucky we were and how you never see this many active whales at once. We felt pretty dang lucky!
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