Mar. 12, 2008 - You Don't See This Everyday!
Ever have a something that you've always wanted to do but never did? Today I finally got to check off one of those things on my list.....whale watching. Yes, I've seen grey whales off the coast in Zuma Beach. But I have always wanted to go on a boat and whale watch.
We went with a few friends from our science club. We are all in a club together reading this awesome book, Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day. We get together once a month to discuss what we read and do experiements. This science book is so not text book-y. It reads in the first person and is very exciting. I also love the Charlotte Mason approach to it. It's the best science book I have ever come across. Ok, commercial is over!
So today was just beautiful. The last two days, our weather has been warm and clear. Today was the weather chagned, but it was still a great day to go out on the water. So we drove to the harbor and off we went into the Santa Barbara Channel. For about an hour we saw nothing. Then we saw two grey whales making their way north. We saw them come up numerous times for air and we even got to see them show off their flukes (tail). Even for this California girl, it was a site to behold. But way on the other side of the boat, in the distance was a huge pod of dolphins. They were so numerous. They were feeding and our captain slowly made his way over to them. Suddenly they surrounded the boat, diving all around us and going under our boat, playing in our wake and surfing off of our bow. It was beautiful and all of us were awestruck. They would twist and turn under the water and we could see their blow holes open and close to breathe. Then all at once, we saw them....huge humpback whales. It looked to us that they were feeding along with the dolphins and birds. We even saw them lunge with their mouths right open to take huge gulps of sea water. We saw one of them raise her left pectoral fin. They were quite active. We think we were observing a mother and baby. We were able to observe all of this wild life for about 1 1/2 hours before we had to go home.
Here are some pictures. These amazing animals move to fast for my camera and you never know when their going to pop up. So I consider myself lucky to have these.
Humpback Whale is the large one. To the left of the whale is a dolphin.
Dolphin swimming right next to our boat.
The feeding frenzy
