The last two days have been spectacular for whales. We began yesterday with a cow and calf blue whale near the ship. Then, before we went ashore for afternoon hikes and our beach barbecue, we encountered the seldom-observed false killer whale (Pseudorca crassidens) in the bay waters in front of our landing site. It was an easy decision to delay our landing and take the opportunity to watch a pod of approximately twenty individuals as they swam all around the Sea Bird. These toothed whales grow to almost twenty feet in length, are jet black, and feed on large oceangoing fish. They are primarily a pelagic (open ocean) whale, so it was a rare treat to see them at all, much less close to shore under ideal conditions for observation. One is shown in the bottom of today's photo.
Then this morning we awoke to a beautiful calm day at the southern end of the Baja Peninsula in area known as Gorda Banks. Here we had encounters with bottlenose dolphin, common dolphin, storm petrels, a red-billed tropicbird and, most inspiring, a large group of humpback whales (shown at top and center of photo). For over an hour we trailed along behind a group of at least a dozen adult whales as they swam in very close proximity to one another. We suspect there was at least one female in the group and the rest were males jousting for the chance to be closest to her. There was flipper-flapping, tail lobbing and breaching in addition to energetic swimming and frequent lifting of the flukes as they repeatedly dove beneath the surface. It was a most amazing way to spend the morning, one we just might get used to if this keeps up!
