Image: a pair of surface lunge feeding humpback whales. In additon to the pink soft palate of the roof of the whale's mouth, lots of little silver anchovies are seen jumping for their lives.
2024 09-24 SB Channel
Captain Danny and the crew reported early dense, ¼ mile, fog which opened up a bit later in the trip to 3 – 4 miles. Seas were mill pond glass all day. Our route today took us out towards the NOAA East Channel Buoy and back. Sightings were fantastic (and so were the behaviors): 1300 common dolphins, 2 coastal bottlenose dolphins, 5 humpback whales and 20 California sea lions.
We followed a pair of bottlenose dolphins inside the mouth of The Harbor for a short while before pushing offshore. The common dolphin sightings began with a few hundred animals near the Kelp Farm. Most of the dolphins were wisely feeding alongside the whales out near The Buoy.
Two pairs of humpback whales were first sighted slightly east of The Buoy, they split up, and one pair came back to reform the quad pod a shore time later. The original pair took advantage of what had to be an almost endless supply of northern anchovies on the surface. They went about vertical lunge feeding non stop for the duration of our observations. (See an example of two lunge feeding humpback whales in today’s photograph). Things got more interesting when the foursome reunited and all of them lunge fed. In addition to the dolphins and whales, about 20 California sea lions also joined the banquet festivities.
An additional single whale was watched about ½ mile away.
You never know what Mother Nature has in store.
Bob Perry
Condor Express
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