Spending the Day with a Humpback – 2/9/19

On our first trip of the day we found one humpback whale near Mile Rock, near the end of the Golden Gate Strait.

There was a lot of bird activity and bait in the area, but we did not observe any feeding behaviors or fluke dives. The whale moved in large circles and slowly moved east with the incoming tide.

Later that afternoon we found the same whale near Mile Rock again. It was close to the shoreline at Land’s End.

We saw one fluke dive from this animal, which we tentatively identified as “Black October”.

We saw a lot of feeding activity from this animal, including lunge feeding and roll feeding.

There were birds hovering over the whale as well.

There were lots of boats in the area, including two large ships. One of the ships was careful to maneuver around the whale. An ebbing tide and northwestern wind created rough conditions in the Golden Gate Strait, making it harder to approach the whale. We spent about 40 minutes with this animal.

-Allison

This post was adapted from a blog, read the original here