Mood:
luckyWhat a beautiful day! I was on H&M Landing's Ocean Odyssey boat- with ~53 passengers & 2 other Museum Whalers... going out to sea in search of Blue Whales.
The morning started off overcast, but eventually the sun came out. The water at times was like glass! This helped us locate and view the whales... yes, whales! We got a brief sight of a Humpback whale (I'll take credit for spotting this beautiful mammal!) and 1 Minke whale. The Minke whale was kind enough to hang out with us for a few minutes- so unlike those minkes!
Everyone was blessed to view RISSO'S dolphins - 2 groups (15-20, and ~10). They were quite active- one even breached 2 times in a row! (Of course, I captured a picture of the 'splash' as it entered the water..) We also saw some Common Dolphins
2 Blue whales! Wow, oh wow, oh wow! To see these Blues from our coast is incredible. We spent, what seems like, 1 hour with the 1st Blue. His/her behaviour was unique... before each surface, we would see a circle of 'bubbling' water and then up ahead the whale would surface & breath. It displayed this over and over- it was almost like it was 'announcing' the arrival.. letting us know where to point our eyes & cameras. After awhile, we finally saw the fluke; then we moved on to watch the 2nd Blue. This one was much larger! It fluked a couple of times and came quite close to the boat. Pretty cool! We would have stayed with this one, but we had to venture on to visit the Coronados Islands.
It was fun- talking with the passengers about the marine life we witnessed today. We even had biofacts to share- Blue Whale's Baleen plate (1) & jar of krill. Everyone was amazed that these magnificant mammals eat something THAT small!
I'm scheduled to go out again on September 19th... I can't wait! (It got canceled - oh well)
