Orcas and Feeding Humpback Whales Outside Moss Landing

Calm surface conditions greeted us just outside Moss Landing Harbor on this morning's departure aboard Sanctuary, where we immediately encountered four killer whales actively hunting California sea lions. In an intriguing display of Monterey Bay’s overlapping food webs, two to three humpback whales were feeding on schools of anchovies in the immediate vicinity, undisturbed by the mammal-hunting orcas nearby.

This close proximity illustrates the strict dietary specialization typical of transient killer whales, which focus exclusively on marine mammals rather than forage fish. While the orcas worked the harbor approaches, the humpbacks capitalized on dense nearshore bait, accompanied by hundreds of foraging seabirds including Common murres, Sooty shearwaters, Brown pelicans, and Brandt’s cormorants.

From there, we ventured west along the south edge of the Monterey Submarine Canyon before crossing the deep water three to four miles out. On the canyon's northern rim, in an area known as the Pajaro Hole, we settled in with another ten to fifteen humpback whales actively feeding alongside a dense raft of two to three hundred California sea lions, bringing our count to twenty humpbacks for the trip.

The deep bathymetry of the canyon continues to concentrate massive schools of forage fish right up against the shelf edge, sustaining an exceptional concentration of apex predators across a very compact stretch of water.