On our first trip of the day, we spotted a humpback whale near Mile Rock in 167 feet of water. Over the course of the trip, we followed the whale as it slowly moved east with the tide.
When this whale fluke dove, I was able to identify this whale as #72 in our catalog. 72 is also known as “Crazy Ivan.” we also spotted other wildlife on this trip, including harbor seals. We also had lots of bird activity in the area.
On our second trip we found two humpback whales in the same spot. One of the whales was #72 “Crazy Ivan,” the same whale from the morning trip. We were seeing fluke dives from these animals.
For the first portion of the trip, the whales stayed a few hundred yards from our boat.
However, after watching them for a while, one of the humpbacks decided to come close to our boat.
We saw a couple of roll feeds close to the vessel.
There was lots of bird activity in the area, including feeding Caspian terns. They moved in large circles close to the rock as they fed.
There were large groups of cormorants and other feeding birds nearby. As the trip went on, we started to spot a third spout outside the Golden Gate Strait.
At one point, one of the whales approached within 100 yards of the boat. We saw some fluke dives from the whales on this trip, so we will be able to identify which individuals we saw.
There was also a large amount of bird and porpoise activity, including parasitic jaegers chasing terns.
-Allison
This post was adapted from a blog, read the original here
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