Huge, persistent birdnados supported lots of blubber, fur and feathers..
- Bob Perry
- 3 days ago
- 1 min read
Image: a close-up look at vertical, surface, lunge-feeding humpback whale. It’s mouth is open and the baleen in the upper jaw can be clearly seen.
2026 08–20 SB Channel
7 miles S of UCSB Captain Eddy and the crew located a very productive area that we stayed with all day. Skies were sunny and clear. The water clarity was still superb. There was only a light breeze in the afternoon, and there was still a small bump on the water. We encountered a rich diversity of marine mammals today: 2500 common dolphins, 300 California sea lions, 8 Minke whales, 1 fin whale, and 20 humpback whales (We closely watched 15).
We experienced category 5 birdnados all day. There were plenty of gulls, cormorants, and other birds, and the dominant feathered species was the brown pelican. Birds were crashing and diving everywhere to feed on surface anchovy bait balls. Thousands of dolphins, plus hundreds of sea lions, were zooming through the bait concentrations. As a matter of fact, so were the typically shy Minke whales, although we did not see any lunging from them. Humpback whales, on the other hand, did quite a bit of vertical lunging (See today’s close-up photo for an example). The humpbacks were also seen tail-throwing. We had several humpback close passes by the Condor Express that were probably due to random surfacing. The fin whale we reported was a huge, full grown, adult. It did not get into the middle of things, but worked around the edges, and was there the whole time we were on station.
You never know what mother nature has in store.
Bob Perry
