More sunny and glassy conditions today with lots of dolphins plus some good humpback whales.
- Bob Perry
- 2 minutes ago
- 2 min read
2026 03–20 SB Channel
Our streak of sunny and glassy conditions continued again today on both the 9A and the 12 N excursions. The superb water clarity persisted as well. Most of the action took place within 5 miles of the shoreline. Totals for the day: 4 humpback whales, 3000 common dolphins, and 1 Minke whale. On the afternoon trip, our deck hand Benson was able to put the gaff on a deflated, floating, mylar balloon, and remove it from the water.
A pair of very social humpback whales got the morning trip underway. They were off More Mesa and were seen rolling around and swimming on their sides. One of them breached at a distance as we approached the area. (Our friend Susanne was able to identify these whales by their tail patterns, see note below).This location was also flush with dolphins. They were at least 1000 in groups of 200 or 300 each.
To the W we saw another humpback whale spouting but could not get located on it. On our way home, just outside the Harbor, there were another 60 dolphins.
————-
The same 1000 dolphins were still near More Mesa to get the afternoon observations started. We also encountered one juvenile humpback whale that was not very cooperative. It had long dive times in the 10–12 minute range, and made a big moves when submerged. We got some good looks but they were quick. Another thousand dolphins were found just outside the harbor as we came home.
You never know what mother nature has in store.
Bob Perry
NOTE: here are Susanne’s identification notes for the morning whales. Like Susanne, we all use www.happywhale.com and you can too by punching in their ID numbers shown below:
CRC-17840
This animal has been recorded 23 times. The first time was in 2018 near Nayarit, Mexico (north of Puerto Vallarta), and has been recorded 6 times in that area. Before today, was last record recorded in November of last year from California.
CRC-17276
There are 17 records for this animal. Cascadia Research Collective (CRC) was first to observe this whale in July 2017 off southern Oregon. In February of this year it was recorded in Baja California Sur. It has traveled as far as Guerrero, Mexico.
