Plenty of dolphins and two humpbacks with a unique story.
- Bob Perry
- Sep 25
- 2 min read
2025 09–25 SB Channel
A thick stratus layer hung over the channel and limited our lateral visibility to 3 or 4 miles. Sees were calm. Totals for the trip: 2100 common dolphins and 2 humpback whales. (In addition, our deckhand Aspen removed 1 large balloon from the ocean surface about 5 miles offshore.)
A 600-strong pod of dolphins located the Condor Express just S of the farm. As the group moved E, it brought us close to 4 separate birdnados. (See today’s photograph for an example). We spent some quality time with this group and watched them as they surfed our wake. We continued S towards the lanes.
On the very edge of the Nbd lane we found a megapod of dolphins, perhaps 1500 individuals or more. They were traveling NE. As we moved along with the herd, deckhand Aspen, known for her keen vision, saw spouts nearly 2 miles astern. The pair was traveling rather fast to the E, with long surface times for us to enjoy the view. Both whales showed us their flukes regularly.
Our friend Mark, a renowned photographer and one of the most proficient and prolific users of happywhale.com, was on board today. He was able to provide some detail about our 2 whales. He discovered that neither of the 2 whales had ever been recorded in the Santa Barbara channel before today.
(We have a pretty big Channel, and whale watching boats don’t go out every day, they certainly don’t run at night, and not all of them have a photo-ID person on board all the time…so the 2 whales LIKELY passed through the channel at some point during their annual migration).
According to Mark, one of them was CRC-10796, a female first identified in 1994. It had been reported from San Francisco and from Monterey Bay and from Guerrero Mexico. The second whale was CRC-11378, first recorded in 1990. It had been observed as far north as San Francisco, CA and as far south as Puntarenas in Costa Rica, where researchers from the Cascadia Research Collective photo-ID’d it.
You never know what mother nature has in store.
Bob Perry
