Amazing humpbacks, offshore bottlenose, commons and a gray whale, too
- Bob Perry
- 3 days ago
- 1 min read
2025 03–04 SB Channel
Captain Dave and the crew ran two excursions today: 9 AM and 12 noon. He found flat calm seas with mostly sunny skies on both trips. Water clarity was pretty good and enabled us to better track some of the species. Total sightings for the day: 17 humpback whales (12 closely watched), 200 offshore bottlenose dolphins, 1500 common dolphins, and 1 gray whale.
Things started pretty quickly when we got located on 2 large humpback whales about 7 miles south of The Harbor. They had very short dive times and we’re good about showing us their tail flukes. Just east a bit, we found a very large herd of offshore bottlenose dolphins. They were removing East, and spent quite a bit of time riding alongside the Condor Express, doing quite a bit of surfing on our bow, side, and stern waves. (See today’s photo for an example).
On our way home we slowed down for a quick look at a single adult gray whale that was busy migrating north.
When we headed back to visit the humpback hotspot on the noon trip, there were at least 15 in the area. We watched 10 of them closely. Now they were very busy actively surface lunge feeding in the birdnados. Also in the area where at least 1500 common dolphins. As we turned around to head home, two or three of the whales made friendly approaches to the boat.
You never know what other Mother Nature has in store.
Bob Perry