A rare marine spectacle stunned boaters off Montauk.
A huge orca, possibly one already famous to whale watchers, was seen moving through waters off the coast of Montauk on Monday — a sighting that may be the first recorded off Long Island in decades.
The animal, believed by some to be Old Thom, a well-known killer whale often associated with the waters near Cape Cod, startled those onboard when its towering 7-foot dorsal fin broke the surface and a burst of seawater sprayed from its blowhole.
Video of the encounter shows the orca surfacing briefly, its dark fin cutting through bright blue water roughly 10 nautical miles from the Long Island South Fork destination known for drawing influencers and summer crowds.
“It was just a really impressive animal. I think we all stood in shock and couldn’t believe what we saw and we were screaming at the top of our lungs!” said Discovery Channel personality Dr. Craig O’Connell, who witnessed the extraordinary moment at sea.
“It’s kind of like winning the lottery that we actually got to see one.”
O’Connell was on the water with the O’Seas Conservation Foundation’s Shark Camp, a program that gives high school students hands-on experience tagging and studying sharks.
The sharks, however, appeared to vanish after the killer whale arrived — hardly a surprise, given that orcas are among the few ocean predators known to hunt them.
The crew guessed that the “enormous alpha male orca” could be the notorious, 30-foot-long Old Thom — who is famous for being the only known killer whale to be regularly sighted in the Gulf of Maine and Cape Cod.
Plus, the Montauk beast was traveling with a sea of dolphins rather than a pod of orcas, behavior for which Old Thom is known.
The orca sighting could be the first off Long Island waters in decades.
“I’ve been working out here for 13 years and we’re out there almost every day in the summer, sometimes for 12 hours a day. We’ve never seen anything like that, so it was a big surprise,” said O’Connell, who is also known as The Shark Doctor.
One of the last known sightings of an orca off Long Island was in 1986, and a killer whale reportedly sank a fishing boat off the coast in 1958 after the fisherman struck it with a harpoon.
The species’ return to Long Island could simply be because it was following food, explained O’Connell.
“We were in an area where there was an abundance of prey. There’s big bluefin tuna around right now. There are smaller marine mammals that they can also feed on. There’s also sharks in the area, so likely it’s prey related,” the Shark Week host said.
“It’s a species that utilizes all waters. We call it circumglobal, so they can be anywhere and the fact that it’s here in Montauk is exciting and definitely unusual, but it’s not something that’s out of the realm of possibility.”
O’Connell, however, warned boaters and fishermen not to rush out to see the whale without taking precautions.
The general federal baseline is 100 yards from whales and engines should be put into neutral when the creatures are nearby, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
