Flying whales, porpoises, dolphins – all part of today’s show in the Santa Barbara Channel

May 21 2010

Flying whales, porpoises, dolphins – all part of today’s show in the Santa Barbara Channel

Published by Capt. Dan at 15:23 under Capt. Dan,flora and fauna,Sail Channel Islands,whales

Dall's Porpoise ©David Gallup/GAP

Dall’s Porpoise – according to our reference manual – is quite common. Nevertheless, I saw them this week for the first time, and I’ve been sailing the Pacific for more than 20 years. I’ve got some film of the critters, but it’s indistinct, blurry, shaky and – maybe – barely usable. That’s because these guys spend about .01 seconds grabbing a breath and the rest of the time jinking and zigging and zagging. Surprisingly, these porpoises don’t porpoise. I guess that’s reserved for dolphins. We’d already had two great days of wildlife watching when the Dall’s interrupted our Humpback
viewing. Just north of Cueva Valdez, between two and four miles from the beach, we encountered multiple pods of Humpbacks. They were extremely acrobatic, tail slapping, spyhopping and breaching intermittently. We sailed in the vicinity of 6-8 pods, each with 3-5 whales. This aggregation spanned the area from just north of Cueva to the West.

Humpback breaching © David Gallup, GAP

End of Santa Cruz. The final whale made the most spectacular breach any of us had ever seen, getting its entire body airborne before arching and twisting to land on its side with a colossal splash. There were so many whales spouting, slapping and making a ruckus that it reminded us of the

fountain at the Vegas Bellagio. And one more thing (two more): we could frequently smell the animals (not pleasant) and hear vocalizations. These were not the well know

n “song,” but sounded more like a car attempting to get unstuck from a snowdrift. The Bosun said it also sounded like a tuba player clearing the spit valve on his instrument. Tells you who has more experience with what.

Checkout the slideshow from Orizaba and Platt’s Anchorages.

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