Month: November 2016

11-21-2016: Humpbacks Feeding with Sea Lions, Long-beaked Common Dolphins

Long Beaked Common Dolphins

About 300 long-beaked common dolphins were also feeding in the area. Photo: Vicky Stein.

Conditions have been gorgeous on the water. Crisp and cool with sunshine, clear blue skies and beautiful puffy white clouds in the background. We have had some windy spells in between excellent Fall conditions, with long period swells and foggy mornings. The long period swells don’t affect us much out on the water. But they sure make for great surf as the swells make their way to the shoreline.

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Out front, we’ve had humpback whales feeding with sea lions, flocks of loons, cormorants, shearwaters, gulls, and phalaropes nearby. We’ve also been seeing playful groups of 300-400 long-beaked common dolphins regularly.

Today in particular started out very foggy, but we got lucky with our first two humpbacks who crossed right under the boat. Later on, we found the clear skies and more whales- five different pairs,that gave us some great looks. We were distracted, though, by the friendliest sea lion we’ve ever encountered! It clowned around under our boat for about five minutes, giving everyone on board a look at how graceful these animals are below the water, and how silly they can be above it. The animal probably thought we were a fishing boat. We also stopped to take a look at some of the jellies in the water around us. Since the seas were so clear today, we could see plenty of floating jelly-like creatures, one of which we caught in a bucket for a closer look. When an animal is almost entirely transparent, it can be very difficult to identify, but I think it was a salp. It’s always an adventure out there!

We expect most of these humpbacks start making their way south to their breeding and calving grounds in Southern Mexico and Central America. So we’re starting to see a what we believe is the last feast before they head south, where they don’t eat for 3-4 months. Hopefully, some of these whales may decide the buffet is too good to leave us. We have seen this before. So we’ll keep you updated if some of them decide to spend the winter in the Monterey Bay. We are also keeping our eyes open for the gray whale migration, which ought to be headed south through these waters shortly! We’ve heard reports of gray whales being spotted up the coast. So stay tuned.

11-12-2016 Gorgeous Conditions, Non-stop surface Lunge-feeding Humpbacks close to Moss Landing plus Dolphins!

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Besides all the birds and humpbacks feeding in front of Moss (at least six or seven whales lunging up for a few hours on end), we also had a group of several hundred long-beaked common dolphins feeding about five miles out. Probably anchovies, but we couldn’t be sure. Whatever they were eating was in a thick layer at least 30 ft down. A few of them took a break from their feast to bow-ride with us. Commons are so fun to photograph! An absolutely gorgeous day on the water. Photo: Vicky Stein.

11-11-2016 Humpbacks are surface lunge feeding in front of Moss Landing now

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This was our biologist Vicky Stein’s photo from today, which was a good day but tough for photography. Lots of great lunges, though, and absolute bird chaos. We had pelicans, terns, gulls (Bonaparte’s, Heerman’s, westerns), murres, cormorants, and parasitic jaegers all over the place. This is an indication of the abundance of small schooling fish that both the birds and the whales are feeding on. There were a few different clusters of whales, mostly groups of three vertically lunge-feeding, and not too far out of Moss Landing harbor either! Conditions have been quite nice out on the bay this week and the whales are closer to Moss Landing, as this photo shows.