A private trip with lots of wildlife and an at-sea meeting with Catherine breed.
Image: a breaching Minke whale.
2026 09–26 SB Channel
Today’s adventure was a private charter marine science education trip for ninth grade women sponsored by the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum. Everyone hit the jackpot on several levels.
First, the conditions were very good: sunny skies, calm seas, and cobalt blue water. Second: the students had a wonderful at-sea meeting with the world famous UC Berkeley swimmer Catherine Breed who is currently swimming in the 900-mile length of the entire California coastline. She is raising environmental awareness through her nonprofit “Sea Dreamers“. Third, we had very good sightings: 500 common dolphins, 4 Minke whales and 1 humpback.
As Captain Dave slowly moved into the calm waters of Goleta Bay, the location of the first student research station, we encountered a large pod of very active common dolphins. They were highly motivated and were both acrobatic and aerial.
After completing the first station activities, the Condor Express headed back out to sea. About 3 miles offshore, we encountered a category 5 birdnado. We saw 3 actively feeding Minke whales in the middle of all the birds.
Moving to the S for 3 additional miles, a single humpback whale popped up. We followed along and had a few nice looks. It had long downtimes and we were running a bit late. (Our friend and humpback ID expert, Mark, was on board today and identified the humpback after photographing its tail. See note at end of report). As we tracked the humpback, a fourth Minke whale breached in the near distance. (See today’s photo above for an example)… definitely not something you see every day.
You never know what mother nature has in store.
Bob Perry
NOTE
Mark was able to photograph the tail of the humpback whale and injured into the citizen science database, happywhale.com, and thus was able to identify the whale. In the database it is: CRC-21720, and has been recorded 10 times since 2023 when Mark was the first one to record it. It is traveled as far north as Monterey Bay California where it was only seen once, and to the south as far as Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico.
Please consider signing up for Happywhale and entering your own humpback whale tail flukes.
