January 26, 2024

Absolutely speechless! That’s the only way we can describe our afternoon trip today. We caught word there were ETP’s off of Mission Bay and we went with it. We were about 6 miles when we started seeing lots of white water and a large spout. Two and a half miles later and we found a pod of killer whales attacking a fully grown gray whale! Lately, we’ve seen these ETP’s hunting dolphins but watching Baleen predation was BEYOND incredible, truly once in a lifetime! They attacked the gray whale for about 45 minutes before the orcas gave up and moved on. We watched both the gray whale and the orcas tail slap and barrel roll. There were 2 ETP calves that joined this hunt, learning all the necessary techniques to take down a larger baleen whale. After they left the gray whale, they slowly started moving to the west and 2 really large whales popped up right off our port side giving us great looks. This trip truly was once in a lifetime!

Naturalist,
Brooke