Image: two giant blue whales in the bright sun of the Santa Barbara Channel.
2024 06-21 SB Channel
Captain Danny and the crew reported bright sunny skies all day today. Today’s voyage transacted the entire Channel from Santa Barbara to a point just north of the West End of beautiful Santa Cruz Island. Seas were fairly calm until we reached the mid-channel region. Here the winds increased and the seas became quite choppy. Sightings for the day were great: 6 giant blue whales and 150 common dolphins.
We watched two relatively small pods of dolphins today. A very small pod was watched out by the kelp farm. In a second pod was watched as we headed south east. Both were friendly with the boat.
When we reached the blue whale hotspot we found ourselves surrounded by a very tall spouts. There were 4 individual whales plus a mother with her calf. We believe this is the same cow-calf pair that we’ve seen a several times in the last week, judging by their friendly behavior towards the Condor Express. So it was, again today, that the little calf came over and got extremely friendly. It actually mugged us for 45 minutes. It swam up and down both sides of the boat and under the bow. It spent some time with its face and baleen in our jet wash. Towards the end of the encounter, the large female came back from wherever she went to join up with her youngster. Then the adult, too, got friendly and swam close to the boat for quite a while.
You never know what Mother Nature has in store.
Bob Perry
Condor Express, and