Blue Whale!

My wife and I went whale watching out of San Diego on Thursday. It was our first whale watch since our cruise to Alaska in 2013. While we saw humpback whales that time, I wasn't exactly sure what we might catch this time around. San Diego Whale Watch maintains a tote board with the count of what they've seen over the past few days and I noticed that just the day before they encountered a blue whale. I was hoping that we might have similar luck as I've always wanted to see one.

For a while though, it wasn't looking too good, as sea lions and pelicans (along with a few puking whale watchers) being the highlights.

We did catch a few dolphins, but not in large numbers. Just when I thought that the trip was going to be a total bust, we spotted a blue whale. Blue whales are not only the largest of the whales, they are the largest mammal on Earth. They are dinosaur sized.

It is hard to get a sense of scale from the photo above or below, but they are huge--close to 100 feet long and weighing some 150 tons.

Blue whales were heavily hunted and brought to the brink of extinction until such practices were banned in the 1960s, which was why I never thought that I might someday see one.

We got to see it at the surface three times. I caught it going under twice. Once was from fairly far away, but the first time was at a perfect distance. Here's how it looked:

Everyone was pretty happy seeing that. (Note: I used GifMaker for combining the frames.) Here's a crop on one of the frames:

Notice the markings near the whale's fluke. We were told that those were signs of the whale having been injured by a boat some years ago. It certainly makes for distinctive markings today, but I am sure that it wasn't a pleasant experience for the whale when it happened. All-in-all, it was an amazing trip and I'm very happy to have had the chance to see this majestic blue whale.

There Be Whales Here!

Back on our Alaskan cruise in September when we stopped in Juneau we had the chance to go whale watching as our shore excursion. We chose a tour from Allen Marine Tours and they certainly did deliver.

We had been whale watching once before but had never had the chance to see humpback whales and were very much hoping to get a good look at some this time around. I even wore a Star Trek shirt hoping that it help to bring out the humpbacks. I don't think that the shirt made any difference but the whales certainly did cooperate.

On board the whale watching ship they had a poster of whale tail (aka fluke) photos from NOAA's Juneau Fluke Identification Catalog. I was hoping that some of my whale shots might allow me to one from the list and, sure enough, I bagged whale #2258 (above). The shot above is cropped from the full frame, but many of the shots to follow were not.

There is, of course, a limit as to how close the boats can get to the whales, but no limit as to how close the whales can come to the boats. On this day the whales decided to come nice and close. 

It was a good day. As we wrapped up the tour our captain reminded us that the cruise ship that were were returning to was also out in the wilderness and a great platform for observing wildlife. Boy, was she right.

Later that day, I took this shot of a humpback whale from our cabin:

On a later day we were able to watch some humpbacks in the distance as they were bubble net feeding. (Yeah, the pics that follow are all cropped from the full frame.)

Later, we even saw what looks like an orca:

It was wonderful to have a look at these wonderful creatures. We also had some wonderful views of dolphins and I'll put those in another post.