Whale Watching Journal: Every trip is different and amazing!

Whale Watching Journal/ October 4th Trip:

To start the trip, while motoring out into Monterey Bay, we saw a couple of harbor seals and cormorants enjoying the sun.

Soon after we found our first humpback whale of the day, named Fran. We have been seeing her for many years here in Monterey Bay - humpback whales can be identified by their distinctive tail markings, like a fingerprint!

Next, we were greeted by a pod of Risso’s dolphins with a few babies. We followed them for a bit but then had to turn back towards Santa Cruz to get out of the fog.

We found a group of three more humpback whales: a mom, calf and escort. They did some lunge feeding and peck slapping and rolling. At this point there were about seven groups of humpbacks feeding in different parts of the bay.

Gorgeous weather! Every trip over the last few weeks has been a little different, and always full of amazing marine wildlife! We saw California & Stellar sea lions, harbor porpoises, moon jellyfish, and birds including pelicans and horned grebes. A few trips we had great visibility and saw four great white sharks.

Shark Park, Sept 29th

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