Captain Vanessa brought the M/V Inspiration out just a few hundred meters for our first wildlife sighting of the day, a haul-out of California sea lions on the end of the privately owned floating bait dock and the yellow mooring ball. We saw about a dozen great egrets and several dozen cormorants, along with pelicans, gulls and a great blue heron.
After receiving more than 1.5” of rain in the last 48 hours, we expected the seas to be rough with the aftermath of the passing storm. However, it was incredibly calm, clear and the sun felt warm after a slightly chilly morning. Just 4.5 miles offshore, we saw our first spout from a whale. Seconds later, we saw three more spouts to the south of the first whale. They were moving close to 5 mph and were going on 7-minute dives, just to the west of Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery and Point Loma. After two more dive sequences, the pod of three was joined by two more whales, for the largest pod we’ve seen all Fall. There was some excitement amongst the whales, likely because it is the time of year where the hormones are elevated and males start forming “competition pods” and go on “heat runs”. The largest male will be the primary escort and the next largest the secondary escort and will jostle for position closest to the female in estrus and battle it out with other males.
We got to see the underside of the flukes, as Captain Vanessa positioned the vessel so that we could take pictures for possible citizen science. Just send any good photos to “happy whale”dot com for learning about the whale that you saw.
Now is a good time to get out on a boat…perhaps after this next rainstorm that is coming in this week. —Naturalist Greg McCormack
