Over the last week we had some of our best wind events of the year. 20-30 knot winds and 5′-7’+ wind waves stirs the The Bay up just right for krill blooms. Those strong northwesterly winds are what bring the upwelling. And it just gets better and better from there. Especially when we also have some full days of sun. The result is what have been seeing out there over the last few days.
The humpbacks are here and they continue to feast on the abundant shallow krill swarms. We could see blows all around our general area about four miles outside of Moss Landing.
We like it when it’s like that. We just kind of go from pod to pod and find the most interesting group. Lately the humpbacks have been lunge feeding on most of our trips. Like today for example. We found three of them that were continuously coming up with their open mouths and bulging throat pleats. Continuous lunge feeding. Very nice. We stayed with these three animals for almost two hours.
Meanwhile, we kept noticing a very large, tall blow a mile or so to our West. The blows were larger and taller than most of the humpback blows we’ve been seeing. So we’re thinking we might have our blue or fin whale. So we went to investigate. As we got closer, we realized it was a fin whale. These are very large animals. This one was likely between 75′-80′. The fin whale is second in size amongst whales only by it’s close relative the blue whale.
This whale surfaced close enough to provide all with excellent views of the very long grayish back and tall distinctive dorsal fin. And it’s blow was over twenty feet tall! This was a thrill. The presence of a fin whale means that we will likely start seeing blue whales any day now.
Today was one of those once in a lifetime experiences for most people. To see repeated lunge feeding and tail lobbing was one thing. But when the friendly behavior started, things really got interesting. After frolicking around, surfacing feeding, the gentle giants decided to come have look at us. What a moving experience. Imagine a 45′ animal just a few feet away, looking up at you. Just floating there. We’re looking back at him. Just remarkable.
The Bay is alive with cetaceans. Unfortunately the weather got in the way a couple of times this week. But that’s what keeps the whales coming back. It’s been an up and down kind of week. After last week’s remarkable mass of whales in The Bay, we had a couple of days where we only saw two or three whales. On one day earlier in the week the wind picked up so bad that we had to call off the search. It’s all very cyclical.
We had reports that there were lots of humpbacks offshore about 25-30 miles. Then yesterday on the way in we got additional reports that there many whales spotted coming back into The Bay just northwest of Moss Landing. So we’ll see what happens today and post an update.
It’s different out there every time. Let me tell you. It was incredible just two days ago to see spouts in every direction we looked. When it’s like that, we kind of just go pod to pod to see which pod will be doing the most interesting behavior. Well, it turned out that none of them were really doing anything particularly unusual. Pretty routine really. Surfacing, blowing, tail fluking and a tail lob here and there. It’s cool and all. Don’t get me wrong. But there were at least a hundred whales all within 6-8 miles of the Moss Landing Harbor.
Yesterday we had three and didn’t see anymore even though we went out into The Bay eight miles. They gave us some awesome tail lobs and some nice close “swim-bys”. But nothing special.
Today we only had two. But I’ll take the two whales we had today over the 100 or so from Saturday and Sunday any day. When they breach and come completely out of the water, you just can’t beat it. That’s what we had today. These two animals first did a simultaneous breach. Both of them launched out of the water at the same time just off of our starboard side. It was just spectacular. Then they each took turns breaching (launching completely out of the water) about ten times in a row. Just remarkable.
We just never know what these animals are going to do. We were with these two animals earlier in the morning before we decided to head out into deeper water to find dolphins. After we had some decent looks at Risso’s and Pacific White-sided dolphins, we made our way back to where we left these two humpbacks just outside of Moss Landing. For about the first 10-minutes they were doing about the same thing. Although we did get a couple of nice tail lobs. Then when I was thinking about heading in and the wind began to pick up, the breaching started. Amazing.
Sorry I haven’t written a post in a while. Dorris has been in Ireland and Scotland for the last couple of weeks and I’ve been running things solo. So I’ve been a bit overloaded with keeping up with day to day operations and have been to tired to process photos and write when I get home at night. But she’s back now. So I’m back on track.
What an incredible couple weeks we’ve had here on the Monterey Bay. We estimate there have been at least 200 humpbacks in The Bay. We’ve counted over a hundred ourselves in an area 6-8 miles in all directions from Moss Landing Harbor and of course we’ve heard reports from other parts of The Bay. Just remarkable. And they are all here feeding on the massive krill blooms that have been happening all over The Bay.
And then there have been recent reports of Orcas over the last couple of days. But they’ve been too far south for us to get to them. Down south of Cypress Point and reportedly heading south.
The Monterey Bay never seizes to amaze me. Seriously. Just when you thought you’ve seen everything, we have what happened today happen. Just remarkable. Over the last week we’ve had some weather extremes. One day it’s perfect: Glassy ocean surface, no wind or swell, nice light and excellent sightings. The next day the wind and swell picked up with a vengeance and blew for two days. Making it impossible to for any kind of sane marine wildlife adventure.
But those same vicious conditions, mainly the strong northwesterly winds, is what makes The Monterey Bay so rich in marine life diversity and quantity. When we have these heavy northwest winds, a phenomenon known as “upwelling” occurs. This is when the lateral movement of ocean water toward shore gets replaced with water from the depths of the Monterey Bay submarine canyon.
Bringing with it nutrient rich water and sediment from the depths and canyon walls of the Monterey Bay sub-marine canyon that are filled with plankton. When the plankton hits the sunlight, we have these massive plankton blooms. One of these types of plankton is called krill. Krill is a favored food source for humpback whales and blue whales eat krill almost exclusively. Anchovies and salmon also eat krill as does many other types marine life. Krill is a small shrimp-like critter about the size of your pinky finger nail.
So krill is pretty much what makes our ecosystem come alive in the Monterey Bay. And that was evident today.
We had glassy calm conditions with no swell and krill blooms happening on the whole Bay. The sooty shearwater pelagic birds are starting to show up in larger numbers from New Zealand. So we were seeing large flocks of these right out the gate.
Then after about 20 minutes a passengers yelled that they saw something just off our starboard side. So I stopped the boat and kept an eye out. And the next thing I new we all got a glimpse the rostrum and dorsal fin of a Minke whale. So that was cool for something a little different.
We see these animals periodically. They basically look like a giant dolphin. Mainly their dorsal fin. But their head or rostrum looks like a small whale. But we usually don’t get great looks at them. More like great glimpses. So we kept moving. Within about ten minutes I noticed blow off our port side about a half mile away so we headed in that direction.
After we got a line a on where it was and the direction it was headed, we moved into position and waited for it to surface again. This was a feeding humpback. It was making huge circles and doing the occasional “lunge feed”. This is where they come up to the surface with their mouth open and take a big gulp of surface food. So we get to see their head kind of come up out of the water. That’s always fun. But this critter only did a few times and then was just kind circling around. Not really that interested in us.
And I had heard of larger pods of humpbacks further out. As we started heading out into deeper water, we started seeing blows in all directions. There had to be at least 10-15 animals in our general area and reports of more in other parts of The Bay. So kind of hang out with a couple humpbacks that at first were circling around feeding and then seemed like they were moving out toward the south. We also noticed two more a little further out that were also heading south and then yet another two more heading south. It was almost like a parade of some sort. So we kept our distance just kind of moving along with them just over a hundred yards off to the side and behind them.
After about 15-minutes of this, I got a report of orcas attacking a gray whale with humpbacks kind of in middle of it all not far from our position and on the exact same course as the humpbacks we were with were heading.
Things were about to get very interesting. So after we received the report, we headed in toward the scene. When we got there, we could see about four or five humpbacks surfacing and “trumpeting” repeatedly. This is when they make a spout and it kind of sounds like a muted elephant. We see them do this regularly when they are feeding. They would change direction toward the orcas every time we observed the orcas surface. When we got on the scene, we also saw the mother gray whale in the middle of it all. Unfortunately, the orcas must have gotten the calf shortly before we got on there. Because we never saw the calf and observed the mother gray whale kind of make her way out of the area alone.
But the humpbacks were pissed. They almost seemed to be pursuing the orcas. Of course, orcas are quite fast swimmers and humpbacks are quite slow swimmers. So they were more like continually moving in the direction of the orcas. It was crazy. Without knowing for sure, my best guess was that the humpbacks were trying to prevent the orcas from eating their recent gray whale calf kill. But maybe they were just in the offensive.
Speaking of orcas eating their gray whale calf kill. What a waste. They seem to only eat the tongue. I’ve heard this before but wasn’t sure. Then this morning, when I was doing an early morning scouting trip before our whale tour, I came across a gray whale calf carcass in the same general area where we witnessed another orca / gray whale calf encounter last week. Sure enough, the animal was completely intact except for the throat pleats and tougue. Although, there were some pretty big chunks taken out of the animal’s pectoral fins.
As we looked around, we could see many spouts in several directions from very close to more than a mile. They all seemed to be moving in our direction where we were checking out these orcas. It was remarkable. The next thing we knew, there were at least 10-15 humpbacks in our general area. They seemed to be in groups of 3-5 and were kind of surrounding the orcas. Turning in the general direction of the orcas as the orcas seemed to move around back and forth in about a half mile diameter area.
We observed this type of behavior for over three hours. With perfect weather and lighting, it was hard to go in. But at some point we had to. So after more than seven hours of marine wildlife touring, we finally pulled back into the slip after witnessing what can only be described as the experience of a lifetime for most people. Just amazing.
There’s still plenty of room on our Saturday May 5, 2012 trip and the conditions should be stellar. But Sunday May 6, 2012 is sold out.