4 friendly humpback whales and 75 friendly elementary school students
- Bob Perry
- May 1
- 2 min read
2025 05-01 SB Channel
Captain’s Dave and his crew hosted a large group of students from nearby Franklin Elementary School on a single 9a excursion. Seas were calm with moderate ripples and a light breeze. Sightings: 4 humpback whales.
After an introductory presentation on the topic of our local offshore oil and gas platforms, we took a close up look at Platform Charlie and the waving kids got a return wave from one of the oil workers. We continued south. Also seen in the vicinity of Platform C were hundreds of sooty shearwaters that are making their first appearance here in The Channel for their Spring/Summer migration.
After our Charlie visit we ran southwest until a single breach in the distance, spotted by 2nd Captain Eddy, led us to an area which quickly produced all 4 of the whales we saw today. The whales started off as 4 single, individual whales. Then two joined to make a pair, a third came in to form a trio and finally, a distant 4th whale rounded out the group.
The whales had a very nice (for us) dive pattern: they submerged for 6 – 7 minutes for some sub-surface feeding or hanky-panky, then came up closer and closer to the Condor Express on each cycle. Eventually, our final surface sightings were all very close to the boat. The elementary students cheered, screamed and yelled…all good stuff!
Behaviors next to the Condor included several large pre-surfacing bubble blasts, sideways swims, chasing around, and at one point, the formation of a super-huge “footprint” on the surface caused by 3 of the 4 whales descending together and doing who-knows-what out of our direct line of sight.
On the way home we drove by a 5th whale that was probably not seen by many.
You never know what Mother Nature has in store.
Bob Perry
