A huge, persistent, birdnado with epic, nonstop surface lunge feeding, and more.
- Bob Perry
- Oct 9
- 2 min read
2025 10–09 SB Channel
It was sunny and “short sleeve warm” weather out in the channel. For the first few hours the ocean was glassy then it became lightly rippled. During the last part of our adventure, the wind came up to a moderate breeze level. Captain Eddy and the crew located one of the largest concentrations of surface lunge-feeding humpback whales I’ve personally ever seen.
Totals for the trip: 26 humpback whales (we closely watched 18), 8000 common dolphins, 500 California sea lions and 6 coastal bottlenose dolphins. (As described towards the end of this report, we saw the coastal bottlenose dolphins near the harbor as we came back in the afternoon. Therefore, the word dolphin below refers to the common dolphin.)
10:35 AM. We were SW of the rigs and watched our first 3 whales in the company of about 1500 dolphins. We also saw 1 additional whale breaching to the W of our location. There were numerous California sea lions here as well. We continued S.
11:15 AM. We started with one humpback that had a white tail with five more whales in the distance. Two additional whales came into the area which, by then, was flooded with sea lions and dolphins.
11:20 AM to 12:40 PM. During this time We were surrounded by action in the largest birdnado area I have ever seen, covering several square miles. There were many small surface anchovy schools and one very large one that was the main target of the mammals. Countless instances of gluttonous behavior were seen For the humpback whales, this took the form of vertical and horizontal surface lunge-feeding. Many of these lunges were done individually, but others were done in pairs and trios, cooperatively. Meanwhile when a lunge took place, there was plenty of by-catch for the sea lions and dolphins, although they were also feeding directly on the live bait balls.
We witnessed bubble blasts, and heard both trumpet vocalizations, and chatter vocalizations. There were head stands, head stands while feeding, head stands that included waving tail flutes around in all directions. We saw a sideways lunges at the surface that did not break into the air. We saw several different flavors of what appeared to be rolling and feeding (wishing we had an underwater camera).
On the way home we encountered 7 more whales and several pods of dolphins. Near the red, outermost harbor entrance buoy, the keen eyes of Captain Eddy spotted a small group of coastal bottlenose dolphins. We followed them for a while.
You never know what mother nature has in store.
Bob Perry
