Hello whalewatchers: We watched some humpback whales today that were very active– fluking and breaching. (Many thanks to Rob Nawojchik for the photo used here.) We went ashore at Los Frailes for a nice hike and finished the day with a snorkel there. Snorkelers reported seeing lots of fish. We’re heading up into the Sea of Cortez tonight to be in a area to snorkel with whale sharks.
Capt Aaron and the Searcher crew
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
A pilot whale surfaces and shows a distinctive dorsal fin.
Hello whalewatchers: We had another awesome day today with great weather, clear skies, calm seas and light winds. Great sea birds this morning again–frigates, black and least storm petrels, brown and masked boobies, pink-footed shearwaters, red-billed tropicbirds too! The whalewatching was tremendous with a humpback cow and her calf with an escort and all the cool behaviors that humpbacks display. Also great singing on the hydrophone!
We saw a few loggerhead turtles as well. We stopped at Los Frailes and we were able to get a snorkel session in 77-degree water and fair visibility. Almost everyone went ashore for a walk and had great birdwatching.
Today’s photo is a brown and masked boobies up close.
Team Searcher
Hello whalewatchers: Another great day of whale watching with humpbacks and more humpbacks.
Gorda banks was the hot spot again with great conditions for most of the morning with an hour interruption of wind, lightning, thunder and rain. All four trips we have had rain on this day, highly unusual.
Lots of humpbacks displaying all the usual behavior–breaching, flipper flapping, tail lobbing and several groups up to 7 whales. The highlight had to be the 2 curious whales that stayed with us for an hour. Wow! The water is blue, 76 degrees and calm conditions, all made for a good show. Today’s
photo is of one of the whales spy hopping right next to the Searcher. During lunch we had another highlight with a 20 foot whale shark on the surface. It was a lifer for our charter head Michael Ellis. We finished the day with a snorkel session and a beach walk at Bahia Los Frailes.
Team Searcher
Hello whalewatchers: We have another wonderful day with great conditions. Clear skies, calm seas and light winds. A good day for spotting wildlife offshore of Bahia Magdalena. So far we have seen long beaked and bottlenose dolphin, humpback whales and lots of royal terns.
The conditions are perfect for seeing sea turtles as shown in today’s photo. We have seen at least 50 turtles this morning, mostly green sea turtles. 
(This email was interrupted by blue whales, humpback whales and Brydes’ whales! To be continued…)
Hello whalewatchers,
Today was another great day! We watched several humpback whales seeing all their usual behaviors like breaching, flipper flapping, tail lobbing and more. We also saw a cow with a very young calf along with an escort. Great whale watching today. A special treat was that it got calm enough that we saw four dwarf sperm whales which are rare and we were able to get pretty close to them.
Then we went to Bahia Los Frailes and dropped the anchor for a couple of hours. There was a group that went on a short walk and another group went snorkeling for the first time on this trip. The weather is good so we are headed north to Isla San Jose.
More tomorrow,
Capt Art
Hello whalewatchers,
We had a spectacular day off of Bahia Magdalena today with a lot of life.
It started off with good bird life and a group of six masked boobies (which was a treat), a Laysan albatross and plenty of shearwaters, frigatebirds and gulls.
After identifying the boobies ,we had a humpback whale breach directly behind the boat and while we circled back around to take a look we spotted two blue whales. We spent a couple of hours with the blue whales and had some great looks with clean water and good sea conditions. We saw one other blue whale in the distance.
After leaving the blue whales we came across two very large groups of long-beaked common dolphin with birds associated with them, and some jumping small tuna as well.
After a “Whales of the World” lecture in the bow, we opened the Searcher boutique for some shopping and then finished the day with breaching humpbacks. We saw at least five humpbacks breaching at different times and we were able to get a close look at one breacher. It was a great way to end the day.
Looking forward to tomorrow and more humpbacks.
More then,
Capt Art
Hello whalewatchers,
We had some wind to deal with today that made whalewatching challenging, but we did get a really close look at a breaching humpback. We were able to follow the humpback after it quit breaching and we had some great views. It’s always exciting to watch these acrobats. To top that, we came upon another humpback whale with a calf and the calf was breaching! We were able to follow them for a while and then we lost our lighting at sunset.
We are headed south to spend some more time with more humpbacks tomorrow at the Gorda Banks.
More then,
Capt Art
Hello whalewatchers,
Here’s our mid-day report from the Gorda Banks area. We had great viewing of humpback whales all morning with all the classic behaviors associated with humpbacks. We started the day with a group of five whales and there were two in particular that breached several times. We have seen cows, calves and escorts multiple times with the calves breaching and flipper flapping. There have been times where every direction we looked, there were whales. It was an incredible morning. We put the cherry on top by stopping for 15 minutes with the hydrophone over the side. We had a great audio experience with multiple sounds coming from the humpbacks.
Oh and I forgot to mention we have calm conditions and it’s sunny and warm for a change, and dare I say it no wind!
More from Bahia Los Frailes later.
Capt Art
Hello whalewatchers,
Well we have had quite a morning already. It is only 9am and we have seen breaching humpbacks, a large herd of short-beaked common dolphin and two blue whales. They are all heading northwest so we haven’t really gone anywhere thus far, but we don’t mind!
The weather is good with a large ground swell that is very far apart and a light breeze from the northwest. Good enough conditions to work in today.
More later,
Capt Art
p.s. Photo is by Charles Howell of a surfacing blue whale, looking right down the blowholes. Notice the greenish water just below the surface? That’s the part of the whale still underwater.
