Tour #2 Last day has a surprise Feb 17

Hello whalewatchers,

We had a great day with excellent weather again–nice, flat calm seas. Definitely one of the highlights this trip has been the beautiful weather. We started today with a morning walk at Nopolo Village on the peninsula. We were able to see our friends from Nopolo  on this trip and fill up their fresh-water containers and offer them some fresh fruits and veggies. We travelled south towards Islas Los Islotes and we saw a few Risso’s dolphins, a large raft of storm petrels (both least and black), a few bottlenose dolphin and a blue whale in the distance.
Right before we arrived at Los Islotes, we saw a group of large manta rays and we had great looks at them as they were on the surface. At Los Isolotes, the sea lions performed for the snorkellers and after that we headed south again with hopes for one last whale to end the trip. One species missing from our trip list was the highly anticipated (by some passengers) SPERM whale! As if on cue, a large male sperm whale surfaced close to the boat with only about 40 minutes of daylight left. Watching sperm whales can take a lot of patience since they are very long and deep divers, but this one surfaced very near us. Here’s a shot by Val Shore:

Sperm whale blows at sunset

It was a great way to end the trip. There was yet another great sunset and a spectacular moon rise, all within a hour of the close sperm whale.
Looking forward to next trip.
Capt Art

p.s. Just added Hilary Thompson’s photo of the sperm whale here!

2020-07-15T16:35:24-07:00February 18th, 2011|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|

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