MONTAUK, N.Y. — A New York Coast Guard officer has been relieved of command after dramatic photos surfaced on the Internet of two rescue boats training in heavy surf generated by Hurricane Bill off the eastern end of Long Island.

A Coast Guard commander said Chief Petty Officer James Weber put his boats and crews in a dangerous situation during the August storm, according to Newsday.

Thomas Colla/Newsday

One spectacular picture showed one of the $1.2 million, 47-foot motor lifeboats half out of the water with its bow pointed skyward as it flew over the top of a cresting swell near Montauk.

The award-winning photos were made by a photographer Thomas Colla — you can see them on the website tcolla.com — who said on his Twitter and Facebook pages that he was not happy about th Coast Guard action.

"Really sorry if my photos had anything to do with this," he wrote on Facebook. "Not feeling good at all about this."

In an interview with Newsday, he said: "He was motoring around the wave...from what I was seeing, he was very capable and very intelligent in what he was doing." The newspaper said that Colla's father was a yeoman chief in the Coast Guard Reserve, and that Colla would be willing to testify in Weber's defense.

Coast Guard Capt. Daniel Ronan says neither Weber nor the skipper of a second boat was properly qualified to operate in surf that high. Weber could still be reinstated if he appeals.

In 2007, similar photos surfaced — published first on Mad Mariner — of a Coast Guard motor lifeboat capsizing in 12- to 15-foot surf in California's Morrow Bat Harbor. Nobody was injured and no Coast Guard action was taken.