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Capt. Dave's Ocean ReportAs seen weekly in the Dana Point News/Orange County Register May 12, 2005 Wow, what an awesome week on the water. I saw something I have never seen before this week: We were out about three miles out looking for dolphin. I was peering
through the binoculars as usual when I saw a guy in a kayak disappear
behind a wave about two miles away. I waited for him to reappear
but he never did. Well, experience has taught me to trust my eyes.
I definitely saw something, it looked like a kayaker, but maybe
it was something else - maybe a whale? I told my crewman Mark to
head that way. As we drew near the area I had seen the phantom
kayaker a passenger screamed that they had seen a whale about a
mile away off our starboard side. I looked over that way and saw
nothing. But I had Mark head that a way anyway. Suddenly the whale
broke the surface leapt into the air and landed with an enormous
splash. Wow! I have never, ever seen a whale that big out of the
water. It was probably seventy feet long.
I
was photographing one of the fins; it was coming up very near
our boat, when I
saw it take off rapidly underwater. I told everyone
on board that he might be getting ready to breach. Less than a
hundred feet from our boat he shot out of the water and crashed
down like a depth charge. I missed that photo opportunity of a
lifetime as I was warning everyone else to get ready. Louise missed
it too but she did get the splash, and what a splash. Another notable Safari this week: we left the harbor and found a pod of whitesided. Not just an ordinary pod of whitesided though, this pod also had an old friend, one I have seen nearly every year for the last five years; A lone common dolphin. I talk about him and show him in my film. This common dolphin lives with this pod of Pacific whitesided, and though it is a very unusual arrangement it seems to be perfectly at home with a completely different species. We visited with them for a while then we followed a cow calf gray whale up the coast- (yes we are still seeing them). A fishing boat the Cortez II called to let us know there were some dolphins about a mile and a half outside of us. I kept tabs on the dolphin as we followed the whale. I was in no rush to get to the dolphin, which looked like bottlenose, as they were also heading up the coast. I figured we would head over and check them out after spending some quality time with the gray family. As the dolphins started getting closer I thought they actually might be rissos dolphin because of the way they were swimming. We finally left the whale after a long visit and headed out towards the now rapidly moving dolphins. I checked them out through the binoculars, as we got closer. Wait a minute, these weren’t rissos or bottlenose, they were false killer whales. Wow again! We have only seen these guys twice in this area before. When I filmed them a few years ago it was the first time footage of these animals had ever been taken off Orange County! They are normally found in much warmer water like off Hawaii. We caught up with them and a large, (most likely male), false killer whale came right over to the boat with a large white fish in his mouth, possibly a White Sea bass. About four other false killers followed him as he swam right under our boat munching on the fish. These false killers vocalize more often and louder than any other cetacean I have ever heard. Without even turning our hydrophone we could hear their shrill whistles, very well, through the hull of the boat. Soon we were out of time and had to head back. If only I had known they were false killers I would have cut short our visit with the grays but still, what an awesome week! Well, that’s it till next week. God bless. This is Capt. Dave, over and out. ____________________________________________________________________ |
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He breached
a few more times and I fired off a few shots, - See photos. Something
you need to realize when you look at these photos is that this
whale isn’t even halfway out of the water. It is so big,
but you can’t even see its dorsal fin, which is a little
over half way down their bodies, in the photo. At seventy feet
that whale was as big as many of the blue whales we have seen.
When these fin whales weren’t breaching they were staying
on the surface for long periods of time so got a great look at
them. We also spotted a nice pod of common dolphin on the way in,
to top off the trip.