Fin Whales
Another orca season in California has come and gone, and again, I saw none. I tried, but the wind has been mighty recently, not just on the ocean, so the whale-watching trip I had planned was canceled multiple times. From what I heard, the orcas that had been in Monterey moved down to Santa Barbara in pursuit of better weather and gray whale calves. By the time my trip could be rescheduled, the best window to see them had closed, but a day on the ocean photographing wildlife is always a treat.
On this occasion, the trip was split over two sessions, morning and afternoon. The morning was incredibly foggy, making it hard to see anything. We decided to head out into deeper waters in search of blue or fin whales, but after an hour or two, it seemed like the trip would be a wash. Thankfully, though, an incredible thing happened. Two fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus), the gray hounds of the sea, showed up and spent half an hour swimming alongside the boat.
I had never seen a fin whale before, and apparently, friendly encounters are extremely rare. This pair was happy to cruise along beside us, though. They didn’t lunge feed or breach like the humpbacks I’ve seen, so it was hard to get a great look at them, but one thing, in particular, gave me an appreciation for their scale. You would see their blowholes as their head crested above the water, but as it sank and the rest of their back arched above the surface, you would see the dorsal fin some distance behind. It was astonishing to realize these markers belonged to the same animal, not even at its furthest extremities.
Crouching down along the side of our craft, I could get low to the water and photograph the whales almost like I was swimming with them. What a sight! And we were treated to one interesting behavior: a whale pooping. A patch of bright red water appeared in their wake. Seeing this and the dorsal fin, I might have otherwise thought I’d found the scene of a shark attack, but it turned out that fin whales excrete red waste because of the krill in their diet!
As the wind picked up, we stayed closer to shore in the afternoon. Multiple humpbacks (Megaptera novaeangliae) were lunge-feeding and throwing their flukes in the air. Around them, brown pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis) crashed down on the waves, and California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) moved like a pack of dogs through the water. I also added photos of a few bird species I’d never seen before to my catalog. The orcas might not have appeared, but it was a great day nonetheless.
