Hello whalewatchers,
We had another spectacular day offshore starting with the weather. We had almost no wind all day and hardly any swell either. That helped a lot. We were able to see a minke whale up close this morning which probably would not have happened without the weather we had. Also we got up close to Xantus murrelets and were able to follow them easily and watch them swimming underwater with their wings.
Also we found hundreds of sooty shearwaters with some pink-footed shearwaters mixed in. A laysan albatross showed up before breakfast ended.
We found short-beaked common dolphin, pacific white-sided dolphin and, at the end of the day, northern right whale dolphins mixed with pacific white-sided dolphins.
Added in were hundreds of storm petrels, both black and leachs–a constant stream of them all day.
After lunch we located five fin whales and we were able to stay with them for two hours to get really good looks at them. At the same time there were black-footed and Laysan albatrosses.
All total, we added four new species of cetaceans for a total of nine species for the two days of the trip–that is six species of dolphins and three species of baleen whales.
Looking forward to tomorrow with reports of blue whales on our bow. We will be in that area at daylight and hope to finish the trip off by sighting the largest whale.
Capt Art