2020 09-25 SB Channel East
There were mostly sunny skies with intermittent patches of stratus floating by. Seas were fairly calm but for the nice southwest swell that rolled through the southern and western Channel. Captain Dave returned to the scene of the humpback and blue whale encounters we had yesterday. Closely-watched totals for the day included 4 humpback whales, 1+ giant blue whale and 2500 long-beaked common dolphins.
It was nearly 11 am before the first small pods of dolphins located the Condor Express. These kinds of pods continued for about an hour until we found ourselves alongside several mega-pods. A few of the morning groups were nursery pods. The later groups mixed it up with the humpback whales. There were also a few sea lions in the area. At times the little dolphins looked miniaturized by the large rolling ground swells as the leaped and attempted to surf these large waves. Fun to see!
“Telescope eyes” and 2nd Captain Colton spotted 3 humpback spouts about 6 miles ahead of the boat. We watched a nice tight pair of large (probably female) whales, then a third beast swam straight through the area. These humpbacks were not kicking up their tail flukes on deep dives, instead they arched up when a big set wave passed by and used the forward motion of the wave to surf their dive launch. Fun to see! The aforementioned pair went through a few minutes of socializing, including some trumpet vocalizations, rolling around, sideways swimming, etc.
The crew salvaged 3 Mylar balloons from the ocean surface today including a nice pretty pink death bag. Not so fun to see.
After spending plenty of quality time with the knobby-headed whales, we searched far to the east and located the giant blue whales. We had enough time to get great continuous looks at one of the whales, but there were many more spout further to the east.
Special 8+ hour trip this Saturday 2020 09-26
As most of you know by now, we are going to be running our second all-day whale watching excursion of the 2020 summer/fall season this Saturday, September 26. We’ll depart SEA Landing promptly at 8am and return sometime after 4pm.
Longer trips give us more time to spend with the marine life. For example today there were 10 giant blue whales in the area, and we only watched six because we ran out of time. Also, longer trips allow us to explore new areas… perhaps even some of the outer islands that we don’t usually visit on our 4 ½ hour trips. (We will follow Mother Nature in terms of weather and marine life to guide our actual route and destinations).
A special, free “Big Bird (Condor Express) Special Raffle” will be held with all passengers eligible (did I mention it’s free?). Among the prizes: free lunches at Condor Café, free digital photo packages of the trip by Adam Ernster, and…free trip tickets (for our standard 4 ½ hour excursions…value $109).
Seating is limited due to the COVID-19 virus restrictions, so I encourage you to sign up now enjoy all the marine life that day, see the Santa Barbara Channel sights, and perhaps even win a raffle. Sign up online:
www.condorexpress.com
I’ll be on board and I hope to see you…
You never know what Mother Nature has in store.
Bob Perry Condor Express, and CondorExpressPhotos.com
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