Mood:
happyMyself and a few friends from the Musuem Whalers group joined the American Cetacean Society members on a full day whale watch trip out of Santa Barbara to the Channel Islands (on the Condor Express)...
One word can describe it.... INCREDIBLE!! A Minke whale, some common dolphins, and... BLUE & HUMPBACK whales! I was not expecting to see the Humpbacks-- and they were lunge feeding, breaching, fluking & pec slapping. One of them gave a great show of pec slapping... throwing the pecs up in the air- back and forth for about ~20 minutes! And, we saw 2 breaches (of course, I missed the 'shot' and only captured the splash at the end). The feeding behaviour was amazing.. lunge after lunge.. one time there were 2 humpbacks going in opposite directions, feeding right next to each other!
Turned around to the other side of the boat, only to see a BLUE whale lunge feeding! The abundance of krill was evident---these whales just didn't stop feeding! Seeing a ~80 ft Blue whale with it's mouth gaping open was spectacular. We came upon a mother & calf - something I had never seen before. How cute!
All in all, we were blessed to see ~15-20 Blue whales, 20-25 Humpback whales, 1 minke whale & the dolphins.
Heather is definitely going to join me on next summer's cruise!
