October 16, 2015
10-15-2015: Very Active Whales, More Lunge-Feeding, Common Dolphins and More
As we left the harbor today the wind started to whip up and put some chop on the water. Luckily, there wasn’t a lot sea with it. But a pesky little chop did made for a little rocking and rolling. After about 10-minutes of running, we came across two mola molas. Also known as the giant ocean sunfish. They were floating there right next to each other as a sea lion seemed to be circling around them. Circled a few times and got some great looks of these odd creatures and continued on.
A few minutes later as we were heading to the west, we started noticing blows another mile or so out. So we made a course headed in that direction. Soon we also could see “dolphin water”. Dolphins will create a break in the surface water pattern. It usually looks like a lot of little splashes from a distance.
We had excellent looks at these common dolphins as they leveraged the energy in our wake behind, along side and in front of the boat. After about 10-15 minutes of cruising with the dolphins, we noticed a massive breach about 300 yards from us so we slowed and focused out attention on where the whale just breached.
The next thing we knew, we were in the middle of about 10-whales that began to full-breach, pectoral fin slap and tail-lob around us. This was one of the more spectacular encounters we’ve seen. These animals were active. And it was a lot of them. There was even one animal that tail-lobbed so close it got some of the passengers wet.
So the action just continues right out in front of Moss Landing.