Curious humpback behavior today.
- Bob Perry
- May 10
- 2 min read
2026 05–10 SB Channel
Fog, dense at times, slowed our travel until we were across the channel and into the lanes. There was no wind or swell. Total sightings for the day: 50 common dolphins and 5 humpback whales.
The common dolphin story is the same as it has been for a week. The largest pod was 20, and most were groups of 2 or 3 at a time. No real action, just a lot of searching.
When we reached the lanes we stopped for a moment while our deckhand Aspen retrieved a pink, Mylar, floating, deteriorating balloon from the ocean surface. No sooner did she have the balloon out of the water when a humpback whale surfaced right next to the boat in the same spot. Captain Eddy believes this is a humpback named “rings” (because it’s TI has a bunch of circular white barnacle scar circles) that we saw last week and you can find out more about it by using www.happywhale.com The whale spent a long time resting on the surface and then went for a deep long dive… a pattern that it repeated a few times before we left and moved on.
We moved S a little ways and found a mother humpback with her calf. The pair had long surface times, and the calf breached twice in a row, right next to the Condor Express.
Moving W we found 2 large adult humpback whales very close to some commercial spot prawn fishing gear. In fact, the whales never left the vicinity, and were never more than 50 or 60 feet away from the gear at any point. There was an incident early where one of the whales appeared to throw its body around a little bit when it was near the buoy (that marked the traps that are on the bottom). It did not appear to be entangled. Very curious.
Velella, the small purple sailor jellies, were seen in the millions.
You never know what mother nature has in store.
Bob Perry
