More lunge-feeding, but rough conditions make the going tough. The day started out lumpy. We were pretty much rocking and rolling right out the gate. That was the word of the day. Not our normal Fall conditions. We usually don’t see such confused seas. We had some mixed swell with a solid unusual late-season south ground swell and a solid West swell. We had to cancel the afternoon trips.
Most of the humpbacks were further out today. And because of the conditions we had a hard time getting out to them. Luckily we came on to a couple regular lunge-feeders. They were coming up with nice lunges about every ten minutes. We even had a couple of massive vertical lunges where they exposed their pink ventral throat pleats. Hopefully conditions will improve today. Stay tuned.
Month: October 2017
10-07-2017: Humpbacks Still Feeding with Sea Lions, Single Male Orca Shows Up
The feeding humpbacks are still the main show in the Monterey Bay. Most of the best action has been on the South ledge of the canyon. So that’s where we’ve been focusing.
But we also came across two feeding humpbacks just off of Pajaro Dunes towards the end of the day. The afternoon/evening sea conditions whipped up pretty good by three or four o’clock. So it made for some challenging operations. Limited our ability to maneuver because of lumpy seas. But we did get some good looks at lunge-feeding humpbacks. So that was nice.
The humpbacks seem to be kicking it into overdrive on the feeding. Especially the ones that are heading south to their calving and breeding grounds off of Southern Mexico and Central America. They know they won’t be eating much for the next couple of months. So there doing there last feeding push before they start their journey in late November and early December.