4-8-21 “Adventurous Souls”

Adventure on the high seas! Thursday saw the Pacifica charging out into a wavy bay with 24 adventurous souls aboard. With captain Danny “The Tank” Frank at the helm, we had little trouble in locating three species of cetaceans 🙂 Early on, Danny sighted a moderate pod of Risso’s (Grampus griseus) dolphin, who graced us with great looks. As the wind was forecasting to pick up soon, we had only but a few minutes to enjoy the Grampus for moving out into deeper waters, where yours-truly sighted a heart shaped blow off the port side. As sure as waves on water, it was a lone Gray Whale. Interestingly enough, the lone Gray was not actively travelling on its otherwise-predictable northbound course (the migrate towards arctic circle in the spring). Nay, the whale was holding put, and sounding (diving) for several minutes at a time. This struck us a odd, as Gray whales essentially starve most of the winter while they spend their breeding season of Baja California; odd that this animal was not in a hurry to get back north towards its summertime feeding ground. Danny then noticed something on the SONAR (which stands for “Sound Navigation And Ranging,” B.T.W): krill swarms, three hundred feet down! While that may seem inocuous to the untrained eye, Danny and I were enthused to see a Gray Whale engaged in feeding behavior off our coast, as the Grays are otherwise only passing by.  Neat! As the winds and chop continued to rise, we chose to make one last stab out to the west before “heading back to the barn,” as they say. What ho? Six Humpback Whales? My favorite! Indeed, Humpback whales have been returning to Monterey’s coasts to spend their summers here, feeding on massive swarms of anchovies and krill. Habitual flukers, all of them, and massive to behold. We stared in awe until finally, the clock and wind and waves said, “time to go home, boys.” All twenty four passengers stepped off that boat with smiles and high-fives and – I like to believe – a little inspired. -Zay-