Our week 6 guests hailed from Colorado, New York, New Mexico and California.
As has happened for most of this season the week began with wind. But things calmed down and as the images will show everyone was treated to yet another grand show. We had ample blue whales including some new individuals to this season. And we finally saw one blue whale surface feeding for the first time this year. Overall the blue whale numbers are still very low but a number of the individuals have been around for the whole season. More humpbacks appeared and in the end they stole the show. It was truly amazing to be among a huge feeding frenzy of birds and have a brydes and a humpback whale along with throngs of common dolphins present as well. One would imagine the birds would have the lead in spotting the thickest fish concentrations and the whales would follow. Yet every time the birds turned to a new spot the humpback was already racing toward it and was in fact never left behind. This was a bit truly amazing to see! The whale spouted some lovely rainbows during this frenzy, only we realized they are not rainbows. What are they, whalebows, blowbows, spoutbows or some other kind of bow? Any ideas?
Our group could not get enough of being on the water. One 12 hour day had them pining for more as early as we could get out the next day, and the last 4 days saw us at sea for each of them.
On our last day we even made it to the seaside hot springs for a group soak down by San Cosme Island. The weather was a bit windy and very cloudy and cool, so the 100 plus degree water felt great. The scenery from these pools and the fact that they are only accessible at or near to low tide makes this a very unforgettable experience. Even better perhaps was our encounter with a whale on the way home, on this the final day of the week. We followed the same humpback whale mentioned above from the day before in fairly heavy waves. Just as we were about to call it a week, the whale breached quite near to us. Then perhaps 15 more breaches followed along with chin slaps and pectoral fin slaps. We all agreed it was like the finale of a fireworks show. All week we reveled in sightings of gray, brydes, blue and humpback whales, and many many dolphins. Also, we even got a decent glimpse of the hard to find dwarf sperm whale, actually a pair of them. And the final act from this humpback whale was the ideal way to end the week, a grand a perfectly timed finale.
One final note was that when this humpback began to breach we noticed another humpback whale also breaching about a mile and a half away. As we had not seen that other whale before it started to breach, it seems that they both began this surface display of energy at the same time. Why we cannot know and it remains yet another unanswered and unanswerable question about these majestic and mysterious animals, the great whales.
One more week to go, and we look forward to letting you all know what surprises await us on the sea we have come to love down here in Baja California.
Michael
