A beautiful day at Santa Cruz Island with three humpback whales and more.
- Bob Perry
- Sep 2
- 2 min read
2025 09–02 SB Channel
We had rain, thunder and lightning in the early morning hours. By the time the trip left the docks, the clouds were parting it was beginning to get sunny. It remained nice all day. There was a brisk breeze that cooled things off. Captain Eddy and the crew headed back to beautiful Prisoners Harbor on Santa Cruz Island where all the action was yesterday. Sightings today: 3 humpback whales, 1000 common dolphins, 10 California sea lions and 1 billfish (Marlin?).
At 10:30 AM we found our first humpback whale southeast of the farm. The rascal swam a very erratic course, and had long downtimes. While we were on site, there were about 200 dolphins in the area, and a very small birdnado kicked up for a short period of time, made up mostly of elegant terns, cormorants and brown pelicans. We continued our course to the island.
We arrived at prisoners harbor at 12 noon. We found 2 individual whales that appeared to be swimming in random patterns searching for food. After quite a while, one of them threw its tail once to wake everybody up. One of the humpbacks had a beautiful white tail, which you can see in today’s photo.
During our whale encounter, the sharp eyes of Captain Eddy detected a tiny fin, probably the tail fin tip of a billfish. It came by the boat once, chasing bait. Through the clear blue water Eddy thought it was a marlin.
You never know what mother nature has in store.
Bob Perry
