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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    raleigh

    Whale sight seeing excursion in Va Beach

    heading out on the boat in the morning... we 've already seen some from our hotel. Looking forward to seeing some more closeup..


    anyone been on this particular trip?
    "One POSSIBLE future. From your point of view... I don't know tech stuff.".... Kyle Reese

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington, DC area
    Haven't been, but get us some good pics!

    -jk

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    New Bern, NC unless it's a home football game then I'm grilling on Devil's Alley
    Quote Originally Posted by moonpie23 View Post
    heading out on the boat in the morning... we 've already seen some from our hotel. Looking forward to seeing some more closeup..


    anyone been on this particular trip?
    Is it just this time of year? Agree with JK, post pics!
    Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Feb 2011
    Location
    Summerville ,S.C.
    Quote Originally Posted by CameronBornAndBred View Post
    Is it just this time of year? Agree with JK, post pics!
    Didnt know they did that in V.A.
    My wife would love that.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Santa Cruz CA
    We see them about 50% of the time when we go fishing for salmon or cod here. Most of the time we just see them coming up for air, but every once in a while we get a show.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2011
    Location
    Summerville ,S.C.
    Quote Originally Posted by BigWayne View Post
    We see them about 50% of the time when we go fishing for salmon or cod here. Most of the time we just see them coming up for air, but every once in a while we get a show.
    Found me a vacation idea next year .it would make a great weekend trip.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Quote Originally Posted by BigWayne View Post
    We see them about 50% of the time when we go fishing for salmon or cod here. Most of the time we just see them coming up for air, but every once in a while we get a show.
    Seeing this live would be a dream come true.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Feb 2011
    Location
    Summerville ,S.C.
    Just looked it up you can go for 30 $ a person 1.5 hr trip .seriously looking at the 22nd.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    raleigh
    seen during the excursion:

    Whales - 0

    Dolphins - 0

    Turtles - 0

    bridge - 3

    teenagers on iphones inside the boat - 8



    note....a little disappointed , but a great weekend with mrs pie...great food and wine...
    "One POSSIBLE future. From your point of view... I don't know tech stuff.".... Kyle Reese

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Steamboat Springs, CO
    Quote Originally Posted by moonpie23 View Post
    seen during the excursion:

    Whales - 0

    Dolphins - 0

    Turtles - 0

    bridge - 3

    teenagers on iphones inside the boat - 8



    note...a little disappointed , but a great weekend with mrs pie...great food and wine...
    I have had two whale-watching trips in the past 12 months. Out of Reyjkavik, Iceland in August we had 3-5 Minke whales, which are smaller guys just short of 20 feet. But there were thousands of seabirds, including puffins and gannets, and some dolphins.

    In Maui very recently we had 20-30 humpbacked whales, which are typically 43 to 52 feet and around 66,000 pounds. Don't miss whale-watching in Hawaii if you are there in Jan-Mar.
    Sage Grouse

    ---------------------------------------
    'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Mar 2016
    Location
    The Beach
    Quote Originally Posted by moonpie23 View Post
    seen during the excursion:

    Whales - 0

    Dolphins - 0

    Turtles - 0

    bridge - 3

    teenagers on iphones inside the boat - 8



    note...a little disappointed , but a great weekend with mrs pie...great food and wine...
    I have lived in the area my whole life and I've never been on a whale watching trip. Sorry you didn't see anything... Spring/Summer is is a great time for dolphins. That time of year I pretty regularly see dolphin out of my office window.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Atlanta, GA
    Whales are an ongoing, never-going-off-the-bucket-list objective for my wife and me. We love opportunities to see wildlife of any kind, and continue to do so in national parks and other spots as frequently as possible. Had great opportunities to see them in Maine last June (Minkes and finbacks) and in Iceland in July (humpbacks). I'll never stop chasing them!

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Chesapeake, VA.
    Quote Originally Posted by moonpie23 View Post
    seen during the excursion:

    Whales - 0

    Dolphins - 0

    Turtles - 0

    bridge - 3

    teenagers on iphones inside the boat - 8



    note...a little disappointed , but a great weekend with mrs pie...great food and wine...
    Not surprising.

    This is weird, because I distinctly remember posting my experience with this earlier in the thread, but now I can't find my post.

    To summarize, I took my family on this excursion on December 27th in Virginia Beach. We were out on the water for two and half hours. They talked about whales. A lot. They hyped up the whales. A lot. We saw a total of ZERO whales.

    We did see some interesting birds, including a kingfisher (which I had never seen around here before) and a bald eagle (which I have seen around here on several occasions). We froze our butts off. It wasn't a particularly cold day when we got there to board the boat, but by the time we got back, we were seriously cold.
    "We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust

  14. #14
    October 2018, standing on the deck of an oceanfront house in Sandbridge mid-morning when a Right whale surfaced and rolled just near the surf break. We screamed and charged into the house to wake up the sleeping young adult who then ran faster than I thought was ever possible. The whale stuck around for a few more minutes and as it headed down the line we watched hundreds of people run out on the beach.
    "Lefty the Right whale" came back that evening for another snack and that was that.

    I still keep looking for him though. So, yes there are whales off VA Bch.
    Nothing incites bodily violence quicker than a Duke fan turning in your direction and saying 'scoreboard.'

  15. #15
    The nice thing about going whale watching is....even if they don’t show that day...
    You can still watch the submarine races

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Outside Philly
    Quote Originally Posted by rsvman View Post
    Not surprising.

    This is weird, because I distinctly remember posting my experience with this earlier in the thread, but now I can't find my post.

    To summarize, I took my family on this excursion on December 27th in Virginia Beach. We were out on the water for two and half hours. They talked about whales. A lot. They hyped up the whales. A lot. We saw a total of ZERO whales.

    We did see some interesting birds, including a kingfisher (which I had never seen around here before) and a bald eagle (which I have seen around here on several occasions). We froze our butts off. It wasn't a particularly cold day when we got there to board the boat, but by the time we got back, we were seriously cold.
    Had this same experience in the San Juans many moons ago. The various watch boats would even keep in contact so on our boat you'd hear a periodic, "pod of killers between x and y island". We'd then motor over to between x and y island and by that time, we'd hear a new radio brief, "the pod has moved to the channel next to Z island"

    However, I did NOT have any problems seeing whales off the Gold Coast in Oz or in the Galapagos. Lots and lots of whales, including baby humbacks breaching and some sort of massive school of fish that attracted more whales, dolphins, and seals than I will ever see at one place or perhaps in aggregate again. It was a full on Richard Attenborough level spectacle and the most amazing wildlife event I've ever seen.

    Another whale story --- a cousin of mine worked the Inside Passage on a wildlife watching boat. A young seal once came torpedoing up to the boat and then jumped onto the back end to hitch a ride. Seconds later a killer whale appeared and also jumped onto the back end of the boat. It grabbed the seal and dragged it back into the waters.

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    raleigh
    Quote Originally Posted by tteettimes View Post
    The nice thing about going whale watching is...even if they don’t show that day...
    You can still watch the submarine races
    as we did
    "One POSSIBLE future. From your point of view... I don't know tech stuff.".... Kyle Reese

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    raleigh
    's funny...we were watching the whales from our 10th floor hotel room and we got out binoculars. Mrs pie always offers me the larger pair as i'm blind in one eye.

    After watching for a while, she was pointing out much more detail about the color and shading of the whales at play, so i asked to look thru her set....the quality of resolution was 10 times bette than mine..
    "One POSSIBLE future. From your point of view... I don't know tech stuff.".... Kyle Reese

  19. #19
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Santa Cruz CA
    Quote Originally Posted by fuse View Post
    Seeing this live would be a dream come true.
    Best show I got was last June when we were fishing for salmon. A humpback must have been feeding on something near my boat because it stuck its tail straight up and wiggled it like a synchronized swimmer would do for about a minute before stopping to breathe. Did that about 5 times before moving on. This was all about maybe 500 yards from the boat.

    Whales and dolphins congregate in the same areas as the salmon because of the concentration of bait species. Because we are usually out in these areas for a lot longer than your average whale watching trip, we see the whales a lot.

    Out of Monterey, the same boats that do fishing trips in the morning will run for whale watching in the afternoon. Costs a bit more and you have to get up early, but on the fishing trip you will almost guaranteed get some action on the fish and have almost as good a chance as seeing the whales. If you come out to the SF Bay area, you should definitely do one or the other.

  20. #20
    Join Date
    Jan 2014
    Location
    Thomasville, NC
    On a deep sea fishing trip in 2016 out of Morehead City, we saw a pod of minke whales a couple hundred yards from the boat. Later, another captain said his charter saw ten orcas about two miles offshore. Orcas sometimes come close to the NC coast. AKA as "killer whales", orcas are actually dolphins..

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