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Celia Ackerman

@ackermancelia

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Naturalist @american_princess_cruises Research Associate @gothamwhale
Work and travel marine life photography and reels.

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Yesterday @gothamwhale with @american_princess_cruises we enjoyed two of our returning humpback whales (NYC0094 and NYC0146) who were tandem feeding, but of course my camera was in the repair shop! The trip prior, however, we had another beautiful fin whale in glassy seas with others later spouting in the distance. I really enjoy capturing those moments as they break the surface when you can see the pressure wave and water rolling off their rostrum. It was also exciting to see dolphins in proximity to this whale. It's so disturbing to know that as we are enjoying them here, fin whale hunting has resumed in Iceland.

#whalewatchingnewyork
#finwhale
#endangeredwhales
#wildĺifephotography by @ackermancelia

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a month ago

A few images here that failed to load a few minutes ago... or loaded late apparently. At any rate, amazing sightings with @american_princess_cruises
and @gothamwhale exploring the Western NY Bight. It's hard to do a fin whale justice through images, so I wanted to share the clips first.

#finwhale
#minkewhale
#humpbackwhale
#makoshark by @ackermancelia

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a month ago

Back home, trips aboard @american_princess_cruises with @gothamwhale have been really spectacular since early June, with the last two cruises seeing four cetacean species: Humpback, Fin, Minke and Tamanend's bottlenose dolphins! It's incredible to see a fin whale with the New York City skyline in view! (2nd clip) We even had a Shortfin mako shark leaping out of the water. The biodiversity has been amazing. I'm excited to see what we find out there today!

#whalewatchingnyc
#whalewatchinginthewesternnybight
#finwhales
#seaaspoutwatchout by @ackermancelia

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a month ago

Meet Limpy (and another beautiful coyote, 2nd clip) who is well known by the guides in Yellowstone National Park. Limpy is famous for patrolling the roadside and exaggerating a healed back-leg injury (likely from a passing vehicle or wolf encounter) into a sorrowful limp to solicit unauthorized food handouts from park visitors.

While he puts on a pitiful, limp, Limpy is perfectly capable of chasing prey, dodging other coyotes, or running off with stolen food. He can put full weight on his back leg when necessary and run at a full, capable sprint. Park officials strictly prohibit feeding wildlife.

We were the only vehicle in the area, back in mid January, when Limpy climbed up an embankment and came over to give us a good stare down. Sorry buddy, we know what you're up to and we're going to move along...

#neverfeedwildlife
#limpythecoyote
#Yellowstone
#pronghorn
#americanbison taken in Yellowstone National Park by @ackermancelia

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2 months ago

I greatly enjoyed observing the American bison in Yellowstone this past January. Yellowstone National Park preserves the most important bison (Bison bison) herd in the United States. Bison have lived there continously since prehistoric times and its current herd of about 5,000 individuals is crucial for conservation, because it is genetically pure lacking the cattle gene hybridization common in other herds.

Bison are the largest land-dwelling mammal in North America with males weighing up to 2,000 lbs and females up to 1,000 lbs. They have a lifespan of 15-20 years.

Large shoulder and neck muscles allow bison to swing their heads from side to side to clear snow for foraging, unlike other ungulates that scrape snow away with their feet. Bison have a a dense, woolly undercoat and coarse, longer outer guard hairs. Their fur distribution changes depending on age and sex. Mature males, especially, develop thick, curly "mops" of woolly fur on their heads, along with a massive, dense beard and thick fur on their forelegs. This thick front insulation has adapted to protect them when fighting other bulls and allows them to face directly into blizzards.

Wolves and grizzly bears are the only large predators of adult bison. In one of my clips, you can see bison and a wolf pup from the Junction Butte pack. I also enjoyed a large male rolling over for a nap!

#americanbison
#yellowstonewildlife
#yellowstoneinwinter
#wildlifephotography
#wildlifeportraits taken in Yellowstone National Park by @ackermancelia

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2 months ago

A recent very beautiful day exploring our local waters @american_princess_cruises with @gothamwhale / We had a sea sprinkled with seals and whales. It doesn't get any better than this...

#greyseal
#harborseal
#minkewhale
#humpbackwhale
#exploringthewesternnybight by @ackermancelia

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3 months ago

Coyotes on the Northern Range of Yellowstone National Park. My nephew and I were very fortunate to observe several magnificent individuals last week. We enjoyed very memorable tours with both @yellowstonesafari and @yellowstone_wild

#yellowstonenationalpark
#coyotes
#canislatrans
#winterinyellowstone
#wildĺifephotography taken in Yellowstone National Park by @ackermancelia

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6 months ago

A beautiful Minke whale seen early October @american_princess_cruises with @gothamwhale / Also a few more images and a clip of our juvenile humpback whale with top, black pectoral flippers. Although it was our first time seeing one, I did receive feedback that there are other known humpbacks in the North Atlantic with this coloration. Head Naturalist at the Dolphin Fleet Whale Watch @andrea_spence commented that she has seen adults with black pecs in the Gulf of Maine, and in the Dominican Republic, where she had a whale with one black pectoral and one white!! There were also distant frolicking dolphins that day. Enjoy!!

#minke
#minkewhale
#humpackwhale
#atypicalsighting
#blacktoppectoralflipper
#northatlanticocean
#whalewatchingtour
#whalewatchingnewyork
#marinelifephotography
#localmarinelife
#seeaspoutwatchout by @ackermancelia

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8 months ago

A chin slapping humpback whale! This very active whale, seen during the week of the nor'easter, engaged in several surface active behaviors, including multiple bouts of head or chin slapping. I've observed this behavior more commonly at breeding grounds, where competition pods consisting of male humpack whales jostle for the position of primary escort to a female in estrus. There was another whale in the area that day. Perhaps this whale was battle practicing while migrating, or maybe it was just enjoying the waves!? At any rate, it gave our passengers a great opportunity to see the location of the eye of the humpback whale.

Humpback whale eyes are set on the sides of their head, just above the jawline. This lateral placement gives them a broad, monocular visual field but limits their binocular vision for judging depth. And despite having an eye about the size of a grapefruit, their eyesight is surprisingly poor. Recent studies have found that humpbacks are essentially nearsighted. They can only see large, simple shapes from a distance, and fine details only within a few body lengths. Humpbacks often roll onto their side or tilt their heads to better focus on objects of interest. Their vision is essentially adapted for detecting sizeable shapes, like schools of fish or krill, at a distance.

These findings might explain why humpback whales keep getting entangled in fishing gear. Hopefully these research results will inspire new designs for gear such as traps/pots, gillnets, and longlines and make more visible to humpback whales and other species in order to reduce entanglement risks. Better, still, we already know that on demand or ropeless fishing gear, is the best choice, at least for traps and pots, due to their conservation efforts. Unlike traditional gear that uses vertical ropes, ropeless systems use acoustic signals to release buoys or lift bags, bringing traps to the surface without a surface line in the water column that can trap and injure cetaceans, turtles and other marine life.

#humpbackwhales
#marinelifephotography
#whalephotography
#whalewatchingnewyork
#whalewatching🐳
#observingnature
#surfaceactive
#chinslapping
#whaleconservation
#whale by @ackermancelia

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9 months ago

An atypical **sighting** today @american_princess_cruises with @gothamwhale / Today we observed a beautiful, young humpack whale who was engaged in bouts of pectoral fin slapping for almost an hour. What was unusual about this juvenile was the black coloration on the top of its pectoral flippers (seen better in the second video). We've never seen this before! Humpback whales in the North Atlantic normally have white coloring on both the top and bottom of their pectoral flippers, unlike their North Pacific counterparts that typically have black tops. I'm curious to know if any whale watch Naturalists on the East Coast have seen this before. (Turn off the audio for the 2nd clip, it's distorted)

#humpbackwhale
#atypicalsighting
#whalewatching
#whalewatchinginthewesternnybight
#pectoralflippers
#megapteranovaeangliae
#whalewatchingnewyork by @ackermancelia

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9 months ago

***Fin whale alert*** We had an exciting find, yesterday, during our local trip @american_princess_cruises with @gothamwhale ! It was a late find, but well worth the patience and dedicated search. We found this whale just over 3 nautical miles off the Jersey shore heading towards a large aggregation of feeding seabirds. The last time I observed a fin whale during one of our local trips was back in 2020. This was a beautiful whale, easily, well over forty feet in length. Although most of my captures were from behind, I managed to capture a right body view, where the white, lower right jaw was visible. Fin whales are the second-largest whale species typically growing to 75-85 feet in length.

#westernnybightwhales
#localmarinelife
#whalewatching🐳
#whalewatchingnewyork
#finwhale
#surprisesightings
#balaenopteraphysalus
#cetaceans
#marinelifephotography by @ackermancelia

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9 months ago

Exploring Foxe Basin and the Arctic tundra at Igloolik and Sanirajak: -Atlantic walrus -my guides looking for leads in the ice -King eiders -Baird's sandpiper -Snow bunting fledgling -Arctic butterfly -Ringed seal -Black guillemots taking flight

This July, I got to witness first-hand, the consequences of a warming Arctic, with the early break-up of the floe edge at the communities I visited, as well as drying tundra lakes at Sanirajak. One particular lake once fed into a popular fishing area for Arctic char, which has since declined.

In the 1980s, much of the Arctic Ocean was covered by ice that had survived at least four summers and was 9 to 13 feet thick. It's hard to
fathom that this multi-year ice has since been reduced to just around 5% of that range. Also, the Arctic sea ice extent, particularly at the summer minimum, has halved since the start of satellite records in 1979. Much of the Arctic ice today is first-year, or seasonal ice that is only a few months old, only 5-6.5 feet thick, and is more likely to fully melt during the summer months.

A collapse of the Arctic sea ice would not only threaten Arctic wildlife that depend on the ice for survival; but it would also trigger a cascade of negative effects including faster warming of the Arctic and the planet, and cause a catastrophic disruption of the global ocean food chain. Global weather patterns, and ocean currents would also be disrupted to name just a few of the consequences. We must stop this sea ice loss through climate action.

#arcticwildlife #foxebasin #atlanticwalrus #walrus #canadianarctic #kingeider #bairdssandpiper #snowbunting #arcticbutterfly #ringedseal #arcticseaice #polarregion #artictundra #climatechange #seaiceloss #nunavut #sanirajak #igloolik #wildĺifephotography #travelphotography #explorenunavut #travelnunavut taken in Qikiqtaaluk Region by @ackermancelia

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9 months ago