We spent the afternoon Sunday on a small little boat, Sub Sea Tours Dos Osos, out on the ocean whale watching. Now by small I mean much smaller than you would expect someone to be on the ocean on, by know means an unsafe craft, I would expect the preferred method for sea going would be something about the size of the Titanic. I have never really liked the ocean and it’s size and the size of the creatures that could come and take a bite out of you and would much prefer the size and relative safety of a ship compared to the pontoon boat that we were on.
The outing started with a quick tour of the harbor, looking at the harbor seals and some of the local boats and local folks who live on the harbor.
We exited the bay on almost no waves, it was a strange feeling to have relatively nothing holding us into the bay, the seas wet much more calm than they had been before. The last time that we were out trying to see whales the ocean awl so most hostile, especially to the very same boat that we were on this time compared to the last.
Just out of the harbor we took off almost straight west looking for whale flukes, spouts of water pushed up by the whales when they surface to breath before taking another dive into the depths of the ocean, and again into the food that sustained them. During this time of the year it is the Humpback Whales that are viewable most of the year when taking a whale watching tour out of Morro Bay, California. Below you can see a photo of the fluke that we were looking for, though this one is towards Morro Rock instead of the view that we had looking for the whales.
Not long after finding a couple of whales and working our way behind them we were treated to a breaching whale, the only of the day and all I could do was watch as it landed into the water, such a powerful animal, almost hard to believe that an animal that big could come out of the water at all. The rest of the afternoon we were treated to whales almost lazily swimming through the water, they would surface and get a couple of breaths before diving down again. It’s easy to know when a dive is started, the whale tail usually comes out of the water as they angle their body’s down into the water, getting ready for the powerful strokes that takes to dive to the depths.
At times throughout the afternoon we were treated to whales nearly circling the boat, the closest instance startled us all as the whale surfaced just off the side of the boat in a direction that none of us were looking at the time. The photo below, though not a very good photo is an example of how close the whale actually was when we turned around to see it continuing on. To finish out the day we were able to see one last whale going down for a dive with Morro Rock in the background, absolutely beautiful.
