Historic whale watch for San Diego whale watch!
An incredible trip on our Sunday afternoon whale watch aboard the Privateer.
With an entirely full boat, we raced out well beyond the Drop-Off, where we were hanging out in a depth of over 2000ft of deep blue Pacific Ocean water.
What we found out there was a quad pod of vertical lunge-feeding humpback whales!
4 humpback whales simultaneously vertical lunge-feeding is rarely documented in Southern California, and we feel so lucky to have witnessed it today.
This feeding frenzy went on for over 30 minutes, and we got to see some unbelievable looks at the insides of humpback whales’ mouths, at their baleen plates, and tongues! It was so impressive. We also witnessed a pod of ~500 long-beaked common dolphins, also in the area, corralling the massive bait balls of tiny schooling fish, which the dolphins, whales, and birds were all feeding on.
Sadly, we had to return towards Mission Bay again, although we did see a pair of humpback whales in the distance as we headed towards the coast.
Icing on the cake today was that we got to observe all this in warm, sunny weather and a very mild swell! Hard to believe we are whale watching in December in these conditions!
-Naturalist Ruth
