Captain's Log

The action over the past month has been absolutely incredible. We had orcas almost every day in April and continue to see them into May as they patrol the bay looking for mother and calf gray whales. When they are not around, we have so much to look at, it is hard to complain. Over the past week, nearly 50-60 humpback whales have moved into the bay with thousands of dolphins joining them during the spring feeding frenzy.

The other week on our 8 hour photo workshop we even witnessed an entire gray whale calf hunt with 15 orcas involved. The intensity and power of the event is hard to fully appreciate as it can become overwhelming across all the senses. We hope the sightings keep getting better as we get closer to summer!

Please note as well that our Facebook page is temporarily down, so we hope to have it fixed soon!

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Source: Original archive post

Another incredible day of whale watching! We saw between 20-22+ humpback whales (all within one area, many more across the bay), Risso’s dolphins, and harbor porpoise!

While we saw many feeding groups of whales working with sea lions, we also saw lunge feeding, tail-slapping, and had many friendly/close passes!

One of the trip’s highlights was this calf who played with kelp (aka kelping) for nearly 20 minutes next to our boat. So much fun to watch!

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The first couple of trips were quite different than our afternoon trip today. It was nice see some Risso’s dolphins early on into the first trip. But the whales were tough.

There were decent numbers within about four to five miles from the Moss Landing Harbor. But they were scattered far and wide in pairs. And they were staying down for a long time, coming up a 1/4 mile from where they went down. But we still had great looks.

Then as we were searching around on our afternoon trip. We noticed two whales on the horizon doing some chin slapping as they headed west. It’s an interesting to behavior to watch. They almost seem to be “porpoising” as they moved along to the west. Every 10-15 seconds they would pop the upper part of their bodies up out of the water as they moved forward. Slapping their chins down on the water as they swam.

Then once we got a little closer, they started breaching and barrel rolling among other hijinks.

The conditions have been incredible over the last couple of weeks. Beautiful, Fall conditions. Warm and glassy all day long with lots of feeding humpbacks. So far we’ve had the best whale watching all year long. We expect the action to continue through the end of November. There also have been blues and fin whales just outside The Bay.

The action continues about four miles outside of the Moss Landing Harbor. Massive schools of anchovies have been seen throughout The Bay with scattered feeding aggregations of birds, sea lions, whales and dolphins. We’ve mainly been seeing Risso’s Dolphins.

And the weather continues to be stunning. Beautiful all day long until sunset. We have plenty of room on our sunset tour Saturday. It should be incredible. This is my favorite time of year for those sunset cruises. So nice.

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