Thursday, June 8, 2023
HAPPY WORLD OCEAN’S DAY!
We spent the day with the largest animal on the planet! There were Blue whales everywhere we looked out in deeper water! During our morning trip, we set out to the west and sighted a Humpback whale headed toward the east! We got great looks as it surfaced for numerous spouts and showed its tail on every sounding dive. We looked out to the horizon and saw spout after spout. We hung out with at least 8 Blue whales, with more out in the distance. During the afternoon trip, we set out to the same zone! There were even more Blue whales in the area, but spread out! We got watch as they surfaced for breaths, go on big arching dives! The Blue whale’s tail was sighted a few times today too! On our way in, we sighted a pod of ~20 Offshore bottlenose dolphins cruising north. We sighted a Brown booby, a moon jelly, Velella velella’s and a couple of patches of surface krill!
A whole day of absolutely incredible sightings! Its hard to express just how special seeing a blue whale is, let alone seeing large aggregations of them all together. These endangered whales were nearly hunted to extinction just a few decades ago – what a gift it is to see so many healthy happy whales in our ocean today! We got so many good looks at 8+ blue whales on our sunset trip, the sky opened up to let the sun shine through and allowed us to see that brilliant sapphire blue glow that gave blue whales their name sake!
Naturalist,
Vanessa & Alison
