2016 Tour 1 offshore Ensenada and Islas Todos Santos

Hello whalewatchers: Our first day of the 2016 season was pretty exciting! We found plenty of life: common dolphins, pilot whales, and four different kinds of baleen whales: gray, humpback, a single minke, and several fin whales. One humpback whale gave us a breaching show too. It was a glorious day for weather with calm seas and almost no wind. And to end the day, we enjoyed a wonderful sunset with a green flash.
More tomorrow, Team Searcher

2016 tour1 pilot

A pilot whale surfaces and shows a distinctive dorsal fin.

2020-07-15T16:34:49-07:00February 9th, 2016|Trip Reports|

Tour #2 Feb 8 Islas Todos Santos and offshore

Hello whalewatchers,
We started our trip with some great sightings before we got to our first destination of Islas Todos Santos. I hope this an omen for things to come on this trip! We saw our first whale right after leaving our Mexican clearance in Ensenada, and it was a blue whale! I don’t recall seeing blue whales this far north at this time of the year. After a while we lost track of the blue whale as the conditions were very gray with the early light and overcast. We saw another whale and thought it might be the blue whale, but it was a fin whale and so we spent time with the fin. We had great looks at both whales and that was before 8 am.
We travelled to Islas Todos Santos and saw some pinnepeds: northern elephant seals and harbor seals. There were also oystercatchers and nesting brown pelicans .
We left there and started south. We soon came across a group of Risso’s dolphins and had great looks at them. Travelling a little further south, we saw another smaller group of Risso’s.

The highlight of the afternoon was an area of surface feeding fin whales. One group of five whales in particular stayed at the surface for a long time and we had them close to the boat. They were feeding on the big balls of krill. There were hundreds of Cassin’s auklets in the area too.  We had to break off and continue south to keep to our schedule.
We did see a small group of short-beaked common dolphin, a red-billed tropic bird and a laysan albatross in the distance.
What a remarkable day for our first day! Looking forward to tomorrow at Islas San Benito.
Capt Art

2020-07-15T16:35:25-07:00February 8th, 2011|Trip Reports|

2011 blog begins! Tour #1: Jan 24

Our 2011 tour season is officially underway.The first tour left last night as passengers arrived during a San Diego 70-degree sunny day. This morning, Capt Art is reporting beautiful sea conditions and a pod of 500 or more common dolphins around the boat (thank you to Sally Walton for her photo here) as they leave Ensenada Harbor enroute to Islas Todos Santos and beyond to search for nesting seabirds and harbor seals, and then southward for migrating gray whales and more.

The natualists for this tour are Tom Jefferson and Rob Nawojchik.

2011-01-24T07:45:55-08:00January 24th, 2011|Trip Reports|

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