Whale Watch

On this perfect Tuesday morning, We went out early and began our day with a ham, cheese and egg crêpe from a restaurant called Crêpes of Brittany.

Then we went to the Old Fisherman’s Wharf and got on board the boat that would take us whale watching out in Monterey Bay. It wasn’t long before we came upon an incredible scene – somewhere between 3000 and 5000 dolphins in a feeding frenzy. Billions of anchovies had come up from the warmer water around Los Angeles. The dolphins literally had the water boiling as they were porpoising and diving for their meal.

The people on our boat got excited when they saw a couple of orcas, but they were nothing like what was to come. After the second hour on the water, we cruised northward toward Moss Landing. There we found pods of humpback whales, feeding on the same anchovies that had been brought up from the south. This was not the largest concentration of humpback whales we’ve ever seen. That happened at Icy Strait Point in Alaska. These humpbacks, however, came closer to us than any whales we’ve ever seen. They hung around for nearly an hour, and I’m convinced that some of them coming very close to our 50 foot boat just wanted to say hello. They acted like they were happy that we had simply come to see them. Two came within about 30 feet of our boat and floated there for almost a minute before diving. While they were still feeding, our naturalist played for us live sounds coming from a hydrophone underwater. We heard the clicks of a sperm whale almost a mile under our boat echolocating sardines. While we still saw humpbacks in the distance, we had to get back to Monterey, so we turned around, reversed course while the action was continuing.

The day was perfect as far as weather and whale watching were concerned. I would say today we hit a home run.Read more