Faith came to visit this week, and managed to drag my lazy bum out of the house to go whale watching. In the 11 years we’ve been in SoCal, never once did we go whale watching, even though the migrating whales are just off our coastline.
Whales migrate down south from their feeding grounds in Alaska at the end of summer to their birthing and mating grounds in the protected lagoons in Baja Mexico. Around spring, with babies in tow, they begin their 6,800-mile trek back up north to Alaska. The males and females without offsprings will generally migrate north earlier in February and March.
Our initial trip was on a day with windy conditions and huge swells. The boat ride was aborted shortly after we left the harbor. The company gave us all a voucher for future trips, which we rescheduled for the next morning and were rewarded with light breeze and calm seas.
We were greeted with a pair of migrating grey whales as soon as we exited the harbor, and we spent a good amount of time tracking them until the captain caught wind of a pod of 4-5 whales frolicking with a pod of Pacific White Sided Dolphins.
Upon closer observation, we realized that the whales were not frolicking with the dolphins. They were in fact being amorous with each other in the SoCal waters.
This was certainly not something any of us had ever expected to see, which goes to show how Mother Nature never ceases to amaze.
FIRE'd @ 47 