On the first trip we decided to head around Angel Island before heading out towards the Golden Gate Strait. As we made our way through Raccoon Straits, we found a Gray whale swimming north towards Richmond.
We saw a few spouts from this whale, then decided to head out to try to find some Humpbacks.
We ended up finding 5-6 Humpbacks in the strait, with a group of 4-5 moving in.
One whale started breaching near the Golden Gate Bridge. We watched as the whale slowly moved west, breaching continuously. We also saw the whale slapping its pectoral fin as it rolled over.
Eventually the same whale had moved to start breaching all the way past Mile Rock.
From the other group we saw sharp movements and open mouths that indicated lunge feeding, as well as a few pectoral fin slaps.
There was a huge group of birds in the middle of the strait, mostly comprised of cormorants and gulls.
A few large container ships passed by during this trip. We had several opportunities to smell the whale’s breath.
As we moved back towards the bridge at the end of our trip, we saw 4 humpbacks spouting and fluking in synchrony.
There were California sea lions everywhere. One leapt fully out of the water in front of our boat.
When we returned at 11am, there were still many whales in the strait. There were several ships passing by, so we gave the whales plenty of space.
We started off watching the whales from several hundred yards away. As we floated in the strait, they slowly made their way towards us.
At one point three humpbacks surfaced 5 yards off our bow.
The big group of birds had moved over to Diablo Cove. We saw California sea lions in the strait and ducked quickly into Diablo Cove to take a look at the harbor seals resting on the rocks.
The whales were still lunge feeding on this trip as they slowly moved towards the north side of the strait near Diablo Cove.
-Allison
This post was adapted from a blog, read the original here
Leave a Reply