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Whale
Watching News
(P.S.
That's not static you hear, it's the sound of hundreds of thousands
of clicks per second!)
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| Call 949-488-2828 for reservations or email us us for more Dolphin and Whale Watching Safari information Captain Dave's Dolphin and Whale Safari offers
you the opportunity to get close to and view the exquisite |
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A
Personal note from Mrs. Capt. Dave:
When
we first started whale watching in 1995, the fishing companies took folks
out only during
the Gray Whale Migration,
typically between December and April, on their fishing boats. We offered
our whale watching trips on our
sailboat, and equipped it with an underwater hydrophone and soon, an
underwater camera. In
1998
Capt.
Dave
and
I both felt that the time had come when people needed a way to come to
Orange County
and watch the
wild
dolphins, too...all year round. It was pretty lonely out there in the
beginning...searching for dolphins all by ourselves. But lo and behold,
Capt. Dave found them..almost every time, and soon we realized that there
were resident pods of wild dolphin as large as 5,000. We also learned that
there
were mainly
three species
seen,
Common dolphin, Risso dolphin and Bottlenose dolphin. We also saw the
Pacific white-sided dolphin in the colder months.
It was during that year
that
we visited Yosemite, located about six hours north of Orange County and
Los Angeles. We
learned on that visit that if John Muir had not educated people about
the beauty and vast wilderness of Yosemite through his writing, then
Yosemite
might
very well not be there today for all of us to enjoy. On the six-hour
drive back to Orange County, Dave talked about how he wanted to be the
John Muir
of
the Wild
Dolphins and Whales that lived off our coast. "We have a living,
breathing, moving Yosemite right off the Orange County coast and no one
knows."
He was right about that. We would tell our slip neighbors about the dolphins
and
whales we
would see and they were amazed. If people who had boats didn't know what
was out there, then who did? And that was the beginning of our 'mission'...to
educate
people about the marine wildlife off Orange County and Southern California
and to give them a way to experience that wildlife in an 'up-close and
exciting way' on our whale watching excursions.
Dave took his cameras to work every day, photographing
and
filming
all
the dolphins
and whales he saw whale watching. We began collecting rare items, acquiring
the permits necessary to have real whale baleen, sperm whale teeth and other
items
on board to show
people. We bought our first whale watching catamaran, so that people
could be out front, low to the water and if they chose, they could lay down
on
our
'eye-spy
dolphin nets' and get within arm's reach of the animals. The whale watching
catamaran also offered
folks a way to be out on the water and not suffer from seasickness as
much because
it was more stable. It also had a nice cockpit area and we enclosed it
with eisenglass so it was cozy in the colder months.
Back in 1999, Dave
woke me
up one night
at about 3 A.M. with a new vision of what would be' really awesome'.
He described it as a whale watching Disneyland-at-Sea sort of experience.
One of the components
of that
dream was to give people a way to not only watch the animals underwater
but to give them
a way to 'almost swim with the dolphins' (without getting wet that is).
We've never forgotten that dream, and it seems that each year we draw
closer to
it's realization. In 2006 we bought our second whale watching catamaran,
but not before Dave made
sure
that it had what it took to create an underwater viewing pod. Dave hired
a marine architect firm and began the 16-month arduous journey of making(that
part of) his whale watching dream boat a reality. Most people would have
given up. The USCG had never seen
plans
like
these before, and the Long Beach Office deferred the approval to Washington,
DC. No one had ever designed an underwater area such as this in the forward
area of a catamaran. After 14 months, several mofications and much lobbying
on Dave's part, the plans for the most uniqe whale watching boat were
approved. After two more months of building, the dream is a reality and the
world's first "Eye-to-Eye Underwater Dolphin Vieiwng Pod is
ready for passengers to experience.
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