Some very unusual sightings today! It has been one of those very unique days on the water! We started the morning with some peaceful snoozing bay kitties tucked safely away from the sun under the benches. The ocean was full of life all morning! We very quickly found a feeding frenzy of thousands of birds and some long beaked common dolphins. A beautiful very surface friendly blue whale cruised slowly just beneath the surface for 10 minutes intervals at a time allowing us some INCREDIBLE looks at this gargantuan whale! As we were watching this blue whale a party of jumping dolphins broke out just behind us so we took a break to go join the party! Later on, we found the true hot spot zone of wildlife! There were 8+ Blue whales just hanging out a bit further south west than we had been earlier WE WERE SURROUNDED BY BLUE WHALES! All of these whales in the area were fascinating enough that the navy even dive bombed our boat a few times, we could see the passengers in the plane were whale watching from the sky! It’s such a gift to be in the vicinity of these majestic creatures that were so near extinction just 40 years ago!
We had the most stunning sunset trip! We set out to the SW and could see spouts out on the horizon! Passengers were pointing in multiple directions as there were several tall, columnar spouts seen all around us! We think we found the same big group of Blue whales seen earlier in the day. They were a little spread out which made it thrilling to spot them! We got some great looks at one individual that initially swam straight to us, then passed us by and continued to the west, We were lucky enough to see it lift its flukes on each sounding dive! Taking a closer look, you can see that Killer whales were playing around this one, as there were rake marks on the back of the tail! We had a crazy cool sunset! The big glowing sun peeked out from underneath the dark cloud layer! We even got a quick glimpse at a green flash!
Another day, another gift from the sea!
Hope to see you out here soon!
Naturalists,
Alison & Vanessa
