2020 08-23 SB Channel
“Fogust” (as Daniel Swain recently called it) is back, with a small amount of smoke, and visibilities at times were reduced to less than 100 yards. Seas were calm and glassy. As our good luck would have it, there was a brief period of sun with no fog, and it coincided with our arriving at the “land of the giants.” Sightings included 5+ giant blue whales and 1000 long-beaked common dolphins.
There were scattered groups of long-beaked common dolphin feeding pods all day, starting about 5 miles offshore. Their presence was almost magical as they appeared from lthe nowhere of the fog. They really had our attention!
As we entered The Lanes adjacent to middle Santa Cruz Island, Captain Colton used his decades of experience to sniff out the land of the giants today. Of course it helped that the fog backed off and the only sun of the day started shining down. All five whales were large adults. One was very big. Another was a blue whale we photographed 2 weeks ago and identified by the fact that it is missing half of its tail flukes (and otherwise seems to be doing just fine).
Additional spouts were seen around the land, but the sun collapsed and the return of the fog precluded any further searching…remember, this was in The Lanes! …not a wise place to be hanging around with whales. (Think huge container ships moving up and down the coast).
The trip home was calm.
See you on board!
Bob Perry Condor Express, and CondorExpressPhotos.com