Plan C - Let's Go Whale Watching!
Plan A - my friend John was going to come down, we were going to go to Laguna and watch the historic race cars practice for next weekend's races - then go on a pub crawl.
Plan A failed when John realized he had tickets for a concert back up in the bay area - the pub crawl will be rescheduled.
Plan B - go mountain biking then check in on the historic race cars.
I was all set for Plan B until Plan C came along.
Plan C dates back to Thursday - I amazingly enough saw both Humpback and Blue whales from the house! Apparently blues were somewhat common within the bay on Thursday - I did wonder whether a whale watching trip should be in order for the weekend.
Then I got an email from my friend Pete - he and my other friend Ali had decided to go whale watching on Saturday and wanted to know if I wanted to join them - hmmm - this could be Plan C.
After a couple of minutes of mulling, I went for Plan C and booked myself on the same trip as Ali and Pete - turned out to be the right choice, though it didn't start out like that as Saturday morning started off foggy, and for the first hour or so of the trip, remained that way.
We saw a couple of Dall's porpoises briefly and encountered a small pod of Risso's dolphins in the mist, and then it all got great as we punched through to the other side of the fog bank.
We were surrounded by whales - mainly humpback (probably around 50 or so) and some blues (10 or so), all feeding on an apparent abundance of krill. We got to spend a fair while in the midst of all these whales before we had to head home.
The icing on this already bountiful cake was getting to see lunge feeding for the first time (the whale hits the surface with its mouth open swallowing gallons of water teeming with krill).
The cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake was encountering a leatherback turtle on the way back to Monterey - so we got to see the largest creature on the planet (the blue whale) and the largest sea turtle (the leatherback) all on the same trip.
Overall a great trip!
For the full set of photos, click here.
Plan A failed when John realized he had tickets for a concert back up in the bay area - the pub crawl will be rescheduled.
Plan B - go mountain biking then check in on the historic race cars.
I was all set for Plan B until Plan C came along.
Plan C dates back to Thursday - I amazingly enough saw both Humpback and Blue whales from the house! Apparently blues were somewhat common within the bay on Thursday - I did wonder whether a whale watching trip should be in order for the weekend.
Then I got an email from my friend Pete - he and my other friend Ali had decided to go whale watching on Saturday and wanted to know if I wanted to join them - hmmm - this could be Plan C.
After a couple of minutes of mulling, I went for Plan C and booked myself on the same trip as Ali and Pete - turned out to be the right choice, though it didn't start out like that as Saturday morning started off foggy, and for the first hour or so of the trip, remained that way.
We saw a couple of Dall's porpoises briefly and encountered a small pod of Risso's dolphins in the mist, and then it all got great as we punched through to the other side of the fog bank.
We were surrounded by whales - mainly humpback (probably around 50 or so) and some blues (10 or so), all feeding on an apparent abundance of krill. We got to spend a fair while in the midst of all these whales before we had to head home.
The icing on this already bountiful cake was getting to see lunge feeding for the first time (the whale hits the surface with its mouth open swallowing gallons of water teeming with krill).
The cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake was encountering a leatherback turtle on the way back to Monterey - so we got to see the largest creature on the planet (the blue whale) and the largest sea turtle (the leatherback) all on the same trip.
Overall a great trip!
For the full set of photos, click here.
posted by Tim H at 10:03 PM
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