Thinking that our incredibly good whale karma must eventually run out, we awoke this morning to a spectacular sunrise over the Sierra de la Giganta with little forethought of our morning's activities. The wind was blowing over 20 knots in the San Jose channel and sighting visibility for marine mammals was not good. However, just as we finished breakfast, the call came out over the public address system that whale blows had been spotted. We rushed onto the deck of the Sea Lion to see a fleeting glimpse of two large whales with high dorsal fins diving under the waves. After a few brief looks at the whales our natural history staff could not positively identity them. Finally the whales showed themselves in good light and by virtue of their color, surfacing behavior and dorsal fin shape, they were identified at sei whales. Sei whales are found throughout the world's oceans and are named after the fish that arrive in spring in the fjords of Norway at the same time as the whales.
While watching the sei whales, a number of small, bushy blows had been seen toward the south end of San Jose Channel and our expedition leader decided to take us there. Soon we were making our way south with the wind and sea and were greeted by a pod of sperm whales. There were at least 14 whales of almost uniformly large size, which appeared to be a bachelor group. The whales blew many times just off our bow and then surfaced 10 minutes later off our stern. As we turned to join the group, another pod appeared--a pod with various sized adults and some very young calves. All of a sudden we had at least 27 sperm whales lined up side to side traveling up the channel for almost an hour. Our staff organized themselves, lowered a Zodiac and drove ahead of the mixed whale group so that they could deploy a hydrophone and broadcast the sounds back to us aboard the Sea Lion. At the same time our undersea specialist jumped into the water and attempted to photograph the whales. Although the whales avoided the Zodiac and diver, the sounds that they produced where incredible. Bathed in their live sound over the public address system we continued to watch this incredible group of sperm whales swim toward the deeper water of the north end of San Jose Channel and away to carry on their whale business. As was the case yesterday, WOW! is the only expression that could possibly cover the feeling of our morning with sei and sperm whales.
During lunch, the Sea Lion anchored in the beautiful and protected crescent bay at Isla San Francisco. There was a low tide in the early afternoon and we took advantage of it to explore the tide pools and learn about their extraordinary creatures. Our undersea specialist almost convinced us that the intricate and varied life stories of the invertebrate creatures rivaled that of finorketoodling in whales. Some of us spent a portion of the afternoon kayaking in the crystal clear waters of the bay, others hiked around the island and still others settled in for the stationary hike in comfortable chairs on the beach. All this was topped off by a BBQ ashore with great food and company, fireside stories, singing and stargazing. Not a bad day!
