Image: the northern face of Santa Cruz Island and a humpback whale.
2023 09-04 SB Channel
There were sunny, blue skies all day and no wind. However, a small residual wind chop persisted from strong winds in the outer Channel overnight. Sightings were very good: 300 California sea lions, 5000 long-beaked common dolphins and 6 humpback whales.
The action today was around the NOAA East Channel Buoy and into the southbound shipping lane. Very large concentrations of dolphins were in this area, along with hundreds of sea lions. The humpback whale sightings consisted of individual whales around the area. Captain Devin and the crew moved from whale to whale, an equal opportunity boat. All of the humpbacks today were spending most of their time beneath the surface where, I presume, they were feeding sub-surface. A few of them fluked-up on the surface. Otherwise, I’d describe the overall whale tone as being very businesslike.
Our close proximity to beautiful Santa Cruz Island, with sunny skies all day, gave us wonderful island vistas.
You never know what Mother Nature has in store.
Bob Perry
Condor Express, and
CondorExpressPhotos.com
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