Humpback whale sightings and the abundance no common dolphins were off the charts.
- Bob Perry
- 6 hours ago
- 2 min read
Image: Beautiful Santa Cruz Island provides a backdrop for a humpback whale tail-throwing session.
2029 07-11 SB Channel
Flat, calm, and glassy seas characterized the first half of the day until a very light breeze and warm sunshine took over. Captain Dave and the crew headed S and ended up in the shipping lanes, as we have the last few days. There were 2 nice hotspot zones along the way. Total sightings: 15 humpback whales, 5000 common dolphins, 200 California sea lions, and the crew retrieved 1, deflated, floating, Mylar balloon from the ocean surface.
Just 1 mile out of the Harbor entrance we had a wonderful sighting: an authentic, redwood, Chumash tomol (a Native American canoe) was watched. It retraced the historic voyage Chumash made from the mainland to Limuh (the largest of the Channel islands that was later renamed Santa Cruz Island, island of the Holy Cross, by the Spaniards). You can usually see one parked in the sand alongside the main pathway to the Condor Express. Great to see this wonderful historical reenactment. A town just south of Santa Barbara is named Carpinteria, because it was the of the “carpenters” that gathered Redwood logs from the ocean and crafted these vessels.
15 minutes later we saw our first common dolphins. There were about 500 individuals and they took off in a short stampede burst.
10 minutes later, the sharp eyes of Captain Dave and deckhand Isabel found a single, active humpback whale at least a mile and a half away from us. It was engaged in tail throwing… a wonderful but distant first whale of the day. (see today’s photo for an example).
8 miles S of the Harbor we found our first hotspot. There were at least 3 individual humpback whales here. Several thousand common dolphins were watched and some of them had the aerial support of elegant terns. Throughout the day lots of scattered California sea lions mingled with the dolphins and the birds. One of the humpback whales made an extremely close pass…its fan club on the boat went wild.
In the separation zone between the shipping lanes we spent the rest of our time with at least 12 more whales, and thousands more dolphins. Most of them were individual whales, and traveled in a straight line for a while before diving for a short period. Lots of distinctive whale tail patterns were photographed for future study. A couple of the humpbacks came by fairly close, and one of them in particular, a juvenile/calf swam up along the entire length of one of our hulls and kicked up its tail flukes so close that it was only a few millimeters of separation.
On the way back there were at least 6 more humpback whales all around us, mostly in the distance.
You never know what mother nature has in store.
Bob Perry
