Month: July 2012

07-27-12 Lunging Blue and Humpback Whales Put on a Whale of a Show

Eye to Eye with a Humpback

photo by Koen Veenstra

What a day on the bay. The krill is rebounding with another generation of abundant, yet tiny krill swarming in massive patches close in to Moss Landing. The blue whales are coming back into the bay quite close to land in only 250 feet of water. Today we observed one huge blue whale surface lunge feeding repeatedly. What a sight to view the massive mouth of a blue gaping at the surface and the enormous throat bulging out with pleats extended. It was in slow motion as the whale lunged on its side, exposing its large pectoral flipper high above the water’s surface along with its long side and half of the tail fluke.

As if this sight wasn’t enough, we soon came upon a group of humpback whales quite actively surface feeding.We love it when the krill is so close to the surface that we can scoop it up and show people these marvelous little packets of food energy. We even got some brave souls to sample the krill. It’s quite tasty if you like salty fishy tidbits!

Back to the whales. What a wonderful display today. We lost count of the many flukes and open mouth surfacings as they feasted on the krill. We even got a look inside of a whale’s mouth, showing its pink palate and rows of brush-like baleen.On an unusual note, we observed a humpback with a unique bifurcated (or split) right fluke tip giving it a tri-tip affect.

Then there was yesterday. We spotted three separate leatherback sea turtles. Quite the treat. And each gave our passengers long close-up viewings. These severely endangered sea turtles come into Monterey Bay to feed late summer to early fall on the abundant jellies we are now seeing in full force. The sad news of a large leatherback found dead in the bay yesterday tempered our joy at viewing live turtles. It appears to have died of natural causes, but with so few of them left, we don’t want to lose a single turtle except through old-age. The other jelly-gobbler, the huge mola (ocean sunfish) has also been spotted daily this week.

On the birding side, we have just begun to see many red-necked phalaropes and we spotted our first northern fulmar of the season today. The endangered marbled murrelet was seen this week also.

More highlights this week included a great view of a lone bull orca, close-up breaching humpbacks and a pair of friendly humpbacks that cavorted with our boat for a good half hour. Each day is different out here and we appreciate the surprise and variety of what our bay offers. We are also appreciating the incredibly calm sea conditions this week!

In case you missed Dorris’ interview on NPR’s All Things Considered a few weeks back about the blue whales, here is the url:

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/06/156390709/blue-whales-drawn-unusually-close-to-shore-in-calif

07-17-2012: Plenty of Blues, Humpbacks All Day, A Northern Fur Seal, Amazing Sunset and calm conditions for the Late Afternoon Trip

It’s been a whirlwind of whale watching over the last couple of weeks. Let me tell you. We’ve been running three trips per day. Out there checking out the animals for 13+ hours per day. Life is good. The abundant krill blooms have The Bay hopping with marine wildlife. Everything eats the krill either directly or indirectly. And there has been a lot of it.

We’ve also seen some of the rarer species of marine life in The Bay over the last couple of weeks. At least one leatherback turtle has shown up. Today we started seeing more sea nettle jellies (Chrysaora) showing up as well. I guess that’s why we also saw one of the largest Mola Molas we’ve seen. We even had a basking shark encounter just outside of Moss Landing.

And the squid are starting to show up. Which is why we believe we saw a pygmy sperm whale today within 10 minutes of leaving the harbor. I saw one breach about a year ago in about the same area.

Almost as soon as we got underway after leaving the harbor, I noticed a peculiar small blow. Definitely not a blow like any of the species we’ve been seeing. So I sent our naturalist Giancarlo to the roof of the pilot house to get a better look. Then the animal surfaced several times and stayed up pretty good. Good enough to get a good look at it’s coloring and part of it’s rostrum. So that was cool.

Our new early morning trips are working out excellent. The 6:30 AM trips are by far the best time to be out on the ocean whale watching. That’s when everything really starts happening and the ocean conditions are usually glassy and calm. No wind swell and more often than not, the boat has minimum rolling. It is so easy to see dark objects in the water, splashes, tail flukes, birds, spouts. And our 6:30 AM trips are rarely cancelled because of weather.

The 6:30 AM trips have been by far our most consistently best trips.

07-05-2012: Abundant Blue Whales and Humpbacks, Nice Marine Conditions

Trips Daily 6:30 AM and 10:00 AM-$50.00
For 10:00 AM trips, book online.
For 6:30 AM trips, call (831) 917-1042. The early morning trips are typically very calm and the most ideal conditions for finding and watching whales. It’s also the best time to have a comfortable boat ride with smooth calm marine conditions.

Blue whales and humpback whales have been abundant every day this week in the Bay as the massive krill bloom event continues. Each day is different, but plenty of whales is the constant.

We have had lots of breaching humpbacks, some close to the boat. What a thrill! Humpbacks have been surface lunging, showing us their knobby snouts.

Thursday was all about close-up encounters. A huge blue whale popped up within twenty feet of our bow today. We could look down the blowhole and the back went on forever. We hung out with this whale for over an hour and had some terrific views. The behemoth animal even rolled on its side and waved its pectoral flipper at us.

We don’t often get to observe side-swimming behavior right on the surface with the entire whale’s body exposed. We also had a trio of humpbacks buzz our boat really close, roll on their sides and show us their huge pectoral flippers. When they fluked, you could have reached out and touched it. Amazing.