Grey Whales of Anacapa
January 15th, 2005
Today we took a boat trip out to Anacapa Island to see the annual southern migration of the pacific grey whales. The day was really nice, around 70°, and there were very few people willing to drive down for the tour due to the recent mudslides in the area. It made for an excellent day of whale watching in the channel islands.
We saw about 12 to 18 whales, including a rare family group of six, but It's hard to tell exactly how many whales saw because once they dive under water, they call that sounding, you can't tell if it's the same whale that comes back up. The captain said we were not allowed to drive closer than about 100 yards from the whales, but I think we got closer than that. I'm not so sure that we really wanted to get that close though because when the whales come up to breathe they send out a huge gasp of air at 300 miles per hour, their breath is apparently the worst thing you ever experienced, smelling like dead rotting fish.
After about 2 hours of checking out the whales, we got a bonus trip around Anacapa Island to pick up one of the park rangers who had been stationed there. The island is home to very large populations of Brown Pelicans as well as other seabirds. Most of the cliffs where the birds hang out were so covered in poop that it looked like it had snowed recently. Lastly was a group of six harbor seals spotted sunning themselves on the beach.
Me | Comments (2) | words in this post
WOW! What an experience and what a picture!
You don't see that many whales even off the coast of Alaska. It must have been thrilling....a real whale of a time!
i like the picture you took. good timing.
did you read about the scuba diver that was left by the dive boat off of catalina island? he's suing them for $4m, in part saying that by being out on the water for 5 hours caused him to develop skin cancer. i'm no doctor, but that does seem far afield. i'm glad nothing like that happened to you.