Just before noon on a Sunday in October, passengers settled onto the upper deck of the American Princess, a 95-foot cruising vessel that departed from Sheepshead Bay in New York's Brooklyn borough, into the Atlantic Ocean in search of whales.

Just before noon on a Sunday in October, passengers settled onto the upper deck of the American Princess, a 95-foot cruising vessel that departed from Sheepshead Bay in New York's Brooklyn borough, into the Atlantic Ocean in search of whales.