Fogust 26, 2022 – SB Channel
The dense fog persisted across the entire Channel until we were 2 miles north of Fraser Point, Santa Cruz Island. Sightings included: 200 long-beaked common dolphins, 500 short-beaked common dolphins and 4+ humpback whales.
Three miles outbound from the harbor we encountered a small group of long-beaked common dolphins (and a brown-footed booby). Numbers for long-beaks was particularly low today, perhaps because we couldn’t see very far in the fog.
South of The Buoy, and across The Lanes the Condor broke out of the wall of fog very close to Santa Cruz Island. Here we were met by a nice pod of short-beaked common dolphins and it was a nursery pod. Per usual, the pod was animated with tail-walking, flips, leaps and high-flying.
Close by the short-beaks, we found another small group of long-beaks with a single humpback whale. The whale was moving around and zig-zagging, thus hard to track. Not too far away, however, we saw the tail flukes and moved in to watch 2 adult whales as the fog moved in again. The whales came close to the Condor Express a few times, did some slow-mo tail-fluking, pec-slapping and a bit of trumpet vocalizing.
On the way home (in fog), a whale-watcher on board spotted another single whale and we stopped to observe it. It, too, came close to the boat. There were a couple of nice tail-lobs as well.
You never know what Mother Nature has in store.
Bob Perry Condor Express, and CondorExpressPhotos.com
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