When four college students from Fairfield grabbed their fishing poles Wednesday and headed for Long Island Sound, they never expected what came next.
Schofield Campbell, Charlie DeNatale, Ryan Bard and Brendan Miner were fishing off the Fairfield coast around 3:15 p.m. Wednesday when they spotted a group of light gray forms underwater.
Those forms turned out to be whales, and they seemed to be following the boat. Video shows the marine mammals approach the boat and swim alongside it, breaching several times before disappearing back into the sea.
Miner said the group contacted Norwalk's Maritime Aquarium and showed experts the footage. The aquarium identified the whales as Belugas, which were also recently spotted near Naragansett Bay, according to Miner.
"Have there ever been whales in Long Island Sound?" one of the students wonders in the video.
According to state officials, yes. The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection says whales, porpoises and dolphins occasionally visit the sound.
