07-29-2020: The Humpback Whale Feeding Continues, More Playful Calves

Another incredible day of whale watching! We saw between 20-22+ humpback whales (all within one area, many more across the bay), Risso’s dolphins, and harbor porpoise!

While we saw many feeding groups of whales working with sea lions, we also saw lunge feeding, tail-slapping, and had many friendly/close passes!

One of the trip’s highlights was this calf who played with kelp (aka kelping) for nearly 20 minutes next to our boat. So much fun to watch!

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11-03-2019: Breaching Humpbacks, Risso’s Dolphins

Check out some video from today:

These two humpback whales were carrying on with all manner of hijinks: Tail slapping, rolling over on their backs, on their sides, breaching and close swimbys. These animals performed.

The first couple of trips were quite different than our afternoon trip today. It was nice see some Risso’s dolphins early on into the first trip. But the whales were tough.

These humpbacks didn’t stop jumping for about forty-five minutes. Incredible display.

There were decent numbers within about four to five miles from the Moss Landing Harbor. But they were scattered far and wide in pairs. And they were staying down for a long time, coming up a 1/4 mile from where they went down. But we still had great looks.

Then as we were searching around on our afternoon trip. We noticed two whales on the horizon doing some chin slapping as they headed west. It’s an interesting to behavior to watch. They almost seem to be “porpoising” as they moved along to the west. Every 10-15 seconds they would pop the upper part of their bodies up out of the water as they moved forward. Slapping their chins down on the water as they swam.

Then once we got a little closer, they started breaching and barrel rolling among other hijinks.

This humpback kept rolling over. In the above picture, the whale is on it’s back, with it’s pectoral fins out of the water. These pectoral fins can be 15-feet long on a full-size humpback.

The conditions have been incredible over the last couple of weeks. Beautiful, Fall conditions. Warm and glassy all day long with lots of feeding humpbacks. So far we’ve had the best whale watching all year long. We expect the action to continue through the end of November. There also have been blues and fin whales just outside The Bay.

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10-04-2019: More Lunge-feeding Humpbacks In Front of Moss All Day Long, Sea Lions, Birds, Jellies and Mola Molas.

The action continues about four miles outside of the Moss Landing Harbor. Massive schools of anchovies have been seen throughout The Bay with scattered feeding aggregations of birds, sea lions, whales and dolphins. We’ve mainly been seeing Risso’s Dolphins.

And the weather continues to be stunning. Beautiful all day long until sunset. We have plenty of room on our sunset tour Saturday. It should be incredible. This is my favorite time of year for those sunset cruises. So nice.

Risso’s Dolphin.





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10-03-2019: Epic, Sunny Conditions, Calm Water and Lunge-feeding Humpback Whales

Check out some video from today:

We’ve had nice Fall conditions over the last week or so. Hopefully it will continue. The conditions for the weekend look absolutely perfect. Lots of feeding whales showed up a few miles outside of the harbor.



We also had reports early on that there were feeding humpbacks about four miles from the harbor. So that was good. Lots of options. We jumped back and forth between a few different groups when we first got on the action.

Then about 4-6 humpbacks came together with about 200 sea lions, a few hundred birds and the feast began. It was a bad day to be an anchovy. Hopefully the feeding frenzy will continue through mid-November.

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09-08-2019: Feeding Humpbacks, Sea Lions and Birds Outside the Moss Landing Harbor, Surprise Visit by the CA51 Killer Whales on 09-06-2019

Check out some video from the last few days:

The beautiful Fall conditions continue. We have had some days where the weather has been unstable with fog and wind, some pesky chop. But overall the conditions continue to get nicer as we move closer to October.

The humpback whale feeding frenzy seems to be ramping up. And we’re glad to report there have been about six to eight humpback whales feeding just outside the Moss Landing harbor for the last three or four days.

So it’s nice to be on the action within a few minutes of leaving the harbor. We’ve also had the occasional Risso’s dolphin and Pacific White-sided dolphin sightings. So that’s always a lot of fun.

And then there were the killer whales. The CA51 pod showed up right outside the harbor while we were hanging with humpbacks near the MLA buoy. We had fantastic looks. This is a very friendly pod that we see here in the Monterey Bay regularly.

They will usually give us a close swim by and take a look at us by swimming the length of the boat. Sometimes on their side with one of their eyes out of the water looking at us. It’s very cool. They’re one of my favorite pods. Stay tuned for further sightings. They were last seen heading south on 09-08-2019.



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08-29-2019: Perfect Fall Conditions, Humpbacks Move Closer To Moss Landing, Feeding Frenzy Continues

Check out some video from today:

Humpback whale comes and checks us out.

I would have to say that today was the best day of the year so far. Incredible conditions, 20-30 humpbacks, hundreds of sea lions and birds feeding in about a 2-3 mile area. After about a 20 minute boat ride from the Moss Landing Harbor, we were on the action.

These are the days we look forward to every Fall. Warm, glassy conditions all day long. And lots of feeding animals. We also heard a report of a lone blue whale about 18-miles out. The same report said there was lots of krill out there. So we’re going to be keeping an eye on that.

After very unstable weather and cold, foggy conditions for the last couple of weeks, it feels nice to be out there in a Tee shirt with warm and glassy conditions. Oh yeah. I look forward to this time every year.

September through the end of November is when we have some our best weather and best humpback whale feeding frenzies. The whales know they are not going to be eating much after November when they head down to their calving and breeding grounds down in Southern Mexico and even as far south as Central America off countries like Costa Rica.

There isn’t as much productivity down in those warmer waters as there is up here in the nutrient rich colder waters. So there are not the massive ball of small schooling fish like anchovies. So hopefully we’ll be in for some amazing conditions over the next two months as the feeding frenzy intensifies.





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08-21-2019: Feeding Humpbacks and Sea Lions Seem to be Pushing Closer to Moss Landing

Check out some video from today:

The action continues. The amount of biomass interacting in the Monterey Bay ecosystem right now is astounding. Giant schools of anchovies can be found throughout The Bay with large groups whales, sea lions, birds, fish and more. And luckily, a lot of the action seems to be pushing northward closer to Moss Landing. Just incredible out there right now. Seems like we’re starting to get more and more Fall-like days.

Conditions are looking pretty good all week long.

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08-19-2019: The Amazing Breaching Humpback Whale, More Humpbacks and Sea Lions Feeding Together

Check out some video from today:

We had excellent trips all day long today. We started out on the 08:00 am trip with a handful of humpback whales feeding with about 200 sea lions. We had some incredible close “swimbys” by very surface active humpbacks.

And they sure were not shy as they came up and swam right next to the boat, under the boat and around the boat. So that was nice.

The action just kept on going as we headed out for round two on our 11:00 am trip. More feeding sea lions and humpbacks. Some nice breaches from a mom and calf humpback whale and more close encounters.

The Fall conditions seem be here. Glassy, calm conditions expected for the next week. So we’ll be looking forward to that. And the lighting has been incredible. On round three for the 03:00 pm trip, it took us a little longer to get to the action.

The animals seemed to have broken up by the time we got back to the areas we were earlier. So we kept looking. It wasn’t long before we started to see blows to the west. So we made a course and enjoyed more humpbacks feeding with sea lions and more close swimbys.

Then we noticed a humpback out to the Northwest that breached a few times. Then a few more times. That’s when we made a course for the action. This was a classic display of chronic breaching. This humpback jumped for about an hour. Just incredible.





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08-18-2019: Humpbacks Still Feeding With Sea Lions, More Whales Move Closer To Moss Landing

It’s been hit or miss with the weather. We’ve been having some fog which has made for tough whale watching. But we’ve still been pretty much able to find decent action on most trips. But it looks like we’re starting to get into our Fall weather cycle. So that is awesome. This is usually when we have the nicest weather all day long. Usually warm, sunny and calm. Here are some photos from recent trips.



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08-09-2019: More Feeding Humpback Whales, Sea Lions, Birds and Mola Molas

Check out some video from today:

Humpback whale doing a vertical surface lunge. This is when they chase anchovies up from below the water until the anchovies have nowhere else to go except down the throat of the mighty humpback whale.

We finally had a break in the fog. The fog has made things tough lately. But today was incredible. Beautiful sun, calm conditions all day long.

The giant ocean sunfish, AKA Mola Mola. These are the worlds largest boney-fish. They can get bigger than eight feet long. They feed mainly on the sea nettle jellies. We’ve been seeing a lot of them lately.

It was really nice to see some surface lunge-feeding. We still have large aggregations of humpback whales, sea lions and birds feeding together in various groups throughout The Bay. We have also heard reports of passing blue whales further out to the West.

More lunge-feeding.

For now we’re quite happy to have 20-30 humpback whales all feeding within a 1/2-mile area. We sill had to run for 45-50-minutes before we were on them. But once we got on the scene, it was an amazing show.

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08-08-2019: Humpbacks and Sea Lions Still Feeding Together at same area

Check out some video from today:

Humpback whales, sea lions and birds on a feeding frenzy.





Her are some photo’s from today.

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08-07-2019: Humpback Whales Still Feeding in Large Numbers

Check out some video from today:

https://youtu.be/suu12fuyyUM

I’m running a little behind on posts. So here are some photos from our trips on 08-07-2019. I’ll try and do another up date later. I’ll post video and photos from 08-08-2019 later.











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08-06-2019: Large Groups Feeding Humpbacks, Sea Lions and Birds All Day Long

Here’s some video from today’s trips:

The incredible feeding frenzy continues and the hot spot moved a little closer to Moss Landing for today’s trips. For today, the action was about six miles from the harbor.

Humpback whales everywhere.

After about thirty-five minutes of running we started to see our first blows. Despite the fog layer. But once we were on them, it was full-on feeding frenzy.

Same old story as the last week or so. Fifteen to twenty humpbacks feeding with hundreds of sea lions and birds. If you’re wondering when a good time to go whale watching is, that would be now.

They seem to be chasing the anchovies around.

There’s a phenomenal feeding event going on right now in the Monterey Bay. If you want to see a true spectacle of nature, we have it going on right now in The Bay.





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08/05/2019: 20-30 Humpbacks Feeding, Hundreds of Sea Lions, Thousands of Birds

Check out some video from today:

Humpback whale checks us out.

Today we had even larger groups of humpback whales feeding together with different herds of sea lions and flocks of sooty shearwaters, gulls, cormorants, common murres, terns and more. Despite the morning fog we’ve been encountering over the last week or so, we’ve been able to get on the action within about 45-minutes or so from leaving the harbor.

There were a couple of mornings I was wondering if we would be able to pull it off. Luckily, because there are so many whales, and they’ve been feeding in the same general area, we’ve been able to locate them even in the fog. But the weather has not been great for whale watching. We even had to turn around on one of our afternoon trips this week.

Close up swimby.

The short period wind swell kept getting worse until we were unable to make any headway heading west to where I knew there were whales. It happens sometimes. We have had some very unstable weather for most of July and now into August. But the humpback whale summer feeding action is finally on.

Over the last week or so, the energy in the water, along with the sight, the sounds and smells of all the action going on around us makes for a very intense nature experience. The enormous amount biomass interacting all around us is hard to comprehend.

We believe that each of these full grown humpback whales are consuming up to 3,000 pounds of anchovies per day. That’s more than most humans eat in about a year and a half. And these behemoths are capable of consuming that much in a 24-hour period.

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08-04-2019: Summer Action in Full Swing, Large Numbers of Humpbacks Feeding With Sea Lions

The humpback whale feeding frenzy continues. We’ve been having to run for about 45-minutes to the Southwest to get to the Big Show. But when we get there, it’s pretty incredible. We’ve been seeing groups of 10-20 humpbacks feeding together with about 150 sea lions.

Humpbacks feeding with sea lions.

We’ve also been having some amazing, close up “swim-bys” by full-size humpback whales.

These humpbacks just kept circling us.

When they all come up together it’s incredible. It’s quite a spectacle to behold.

Incoming humpback.

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08-01-2019: Large Numbers Of Humpbacks Continue To Feed, Lots of Mola Molas

We had between ten and fifteen humpback whales feeding close together and circling our boat with about 200 sea lions. Amazing.

We are now seeing what we expect to see during the Summer: Large numbers of humpback whales feeding with large numbers of sea lions and birds. It’s quite a spectacle to behold. The sound of 10-15 whales coming up at the same time and blowing, the sea lions barking, the birds squawking. All within about twenty yards from the boat is an incredible experience. The sights, the sounds and the smells. It’s a full sensory experience.

Today they were mostly feeding below the surface with the sea lions. But occasionally we had some nice vertical, surface lunge-feeds.

We estimate there to be well over 100 humpback whales in the Monterey Bay right now. Also at least two leather-back sea turtles and hundreds of mola molas.

Humpbacks on the prowl.

We’ve been seeing anywhere between 20 and 30 different humpbacks in our area about five miles out in front of Moss Landing. And we’ve been hearing similar numbers from our associates in Monterey and Santa Cruz as well. It’s beginning to look like we’re going to have an incredible Fall.

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07-30-2019: Lots of Humpbacks Feeding In The Bay, Leatherback Turtles, Sea Lions and More

We had about eight whales feeding together with about 150 sea lions.

The Summer action has finally kicked into high gear over the last few days. Large feeding groups of eight or more humpbacks working with about 150 sea lions and thousands of birds. We’re starting to see massive flocks of sooty shearwaters and it’s all only about 5-6 miles outside the Moss Landing Harbor.

They all would go under for about five to seven minutes. Then the barking sea lions would come up first, followed by eight blowing whales.

We have had a couple of false starts. We head out one day and there are lots of whales feeding all around nearby in nice conditions. Then the next day we have fog, overcast and scattered whales.

We are also starting to see a lot more lunge feeding.

The weather has been tough for most of July. We’ve had a lot of foggy mornings. Pretty much everyday has been overcast. The whales have been very scattered. But over the last week or so we started to see feeding groups start to form with sea lions. So that’s been really cool. For most of July we’ve been having to go between seven and ten miles get to the action. But once we’re on it, the action has been fantastic.

This calf started to get pretty active. This was from a trip a few days ago.

It’s been nice over the last few days to have large numbers of whales about five miles outside the harbor instead of eight to ten miles away like it’s been.

Hopefully the action will keep getting better as we get closer to Fall. We’ll keep you updated.



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06-25-2019: Humpbacks Right Out Front, More Humpbacks Feeding to The North, Great Looks at a White Shark

Two surface lunge-feeding humpbacks just off of Sunset State Beach. Photo: Sack, 06-25-2019.

There was another big change up in the system. We had humpbacks right out the gate. So that was a nice change. We didn’t have to go very far to find animals. Pretty much as soon as we left the harbor I spotted a few blows a mile or two to the West. The marine conditions have been rough over the last week or so. Lots of short period wind swell. This means steep, pesky waves rocking and rolling the boat. Whitecaps too. That always makes it harder. That’s because often when we’re looking for animals, we’re looking for a break in the pattern of ocean. Like splashes. But when the whole ocean looks like splashes (whitecaps) it’s hard to know which splash is an animal.

Two humpbacks on the prowl. Photo: Sack, 06-25-2019

But today we had nice conditions, the sun came out and very few whitecaps. We were getting some fantastic looks at two humpbacks feeding just outside the harbor. But we wanted to head out and see if we could find other animals or other whales. So we made a course to the northwest where we saw blows on the earlier trip. And that’s when the real feeding began. We came across two humpbacks that were consistently surface lunge-feeding.

We saw this same whale on the earlier trip. It has a distinctive scar on it’s dorsal fin.

We always love that. This is when a humpback whale chases the anchovies from below with it’s mouth wide open until the anchovies come to the surface and into the air about a foot or two, with nowhere else to go but down the humpback whale’s giant, gaping mouth. We were with two of them that would do this behavior every five minutes or so. It was pretty random though. They were not doing it in the same place. They came up in a different spot each time. But we were close to the beach and the sun was out and life was good.

These animals were constantly on the move. But mainly moving in circles, in and out, then back in again as they slowly seemed to be moving north just off of the beach.

We were also already halfway to the great white shark grounds off of the cement ship near New Brighton Beach just south of the city of Capitola. So we took a survey from all the passengers and made sure everyone was ok with extending the trip by a couple of hours so we could head further north in search of white sharks. We love going up there because it’s usually protected in there. And when the sun is out is the only time we can find white sharks at the surface. To our surprise, as soon as we slowed down and headed closer the beach off of Rio Del Mar, we came across a massive humpback whale surface lunge-feeding just off the beach. Then we saw another one just off of the cement ship, also lunge-feeding. So that was great bonus.

But we were in the area to check out great white sharks. So we left the humpbacks and slowly began our search pattern for the mighty white shark. As we approached an area where we have found sharks every time we’ve looked, sure enough, about 30-yards off the beach, I spotted tell-tale dark, torpedo shaped figure slowly moving a few inches below the surface. Once they are aware of our presence, they seem to almost always come over and investigate. It’s really amazing. We also heard reports of large numbers of humpbacks moving into The Bay from the South. We’ll keep you updated on what happens today.

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06-21-2019: Killer Whales Again Just Outside of Moss Landing Harbor, Feeding Humpbacks

We had the killer whales just outside the harbor today. The same CA51 pod. But they were in hunt mode and didn’t really put on a show for us.

The same CA51 “Friendly Pod” was found just outside of Moss Landing Harbor. But they were tough. They were staying under for 8-10 minutes and being very hard to track. They were clearly in stealth hunting mode. And unless they make a kill, they don’t do the surface behaviors that we like to see. Such as breaching, tail-slapping and generally frolicking around and coming up to the boat. So after about thirty minutes we decided to see what else we could find.

So we made a course for where we had some good humpback whale action about 10-miles out yesterday. We were still seeing lots of bait as we got to the eight-mile mark. That’s when we started to see a few blows. A pair of humpbacks and single going through some of the bait balls. Mostly anchovies. We had quite a few random surface lunges. But not the crazy rampaging we like to see. At least they seemed to be moving into The Bay. But we are still not seeing the full rampage, surface feeding we’ve been waiting for. But all the signs are there.

So we’ll see what happens today. Until the animals come closer, we’ve pretty well suspended our two-hour trips because we’re having to run for an hour or so before we even get on the humpbacks. So we’re pretty much just doing 3-4 hour plus trips until further notice. But when we get on the action we’ve been getting great looks at humpbacks. We did hear of scattered dolphins further to the south.

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06-20-2019: Humpback Whales Come Closer In, Some Surface Lunge-feeding, Large Quantities of Anchovies Start to Show at Surface Inside the Bay

Killer whales on 06/19/2019

The action has been hit or miss over the last couple of weeks. Particularly for the humpbacks and blue whales. But in an unusual twist, the killer whales have been very consistent. Yesterday, Thursday, 06/21/2019, was the first day we haven’t seen them in about four days in a row.

The CA51 pod has been out in front of Moss Landing almost daily for the last couple of weeks. We didn’t see then on Thursday, 06/20/2019, but I saw them out front from the beach this morning (06/21/2019).

However, I was just looking at ocean at the Moss Landing Harbor mouth this morning (06/21/2019) and I could see what looked like the CA51 pod right out in front of Moss Landing near the MLA buoy. Oh yeah. Here we go again with the killer whales. So if you want to see the killer whales, today is your best chance because I already know they are out in front of Moss Landing. That is right now as I write this (06/21/2019, 07:45 AM). Hopefully, by the time we get out there on our 10:30 trip today we’ll still be able to get on them. I put the word out to all my associates. Most of the other boats leave at 09:30 this morning. So they should be able to get on them and hold them for us.

Yesterday was very encouraging. We finally started to see large schools of anchovies all throughout The Bay. Some limited surface lunge-feeding with humpback whales. There were also reports of passing blue whales.

There have been days that we were pretty sure there were no humpbacks inside The Bay. The action has still been decent, but we’ve been having to go outside The Bay to get to the action. It just takes longer to get to where the whales are. That’s why we have not been running our two hour trips. Our travel times to the action has been ranging from one to two hours. But we believe this is about to change after seeing so much humpback whale food (anchovies) throughout The Bay yesterday.

We’ll see what happens today. But we’re pretty sure we’ll be seeing killer whales today because I just saw them out front about thirty-minutes ago. If you want to check out some killer whales today, we still have plenty room on our 03:00 pm trip today. We’ll keep you updated on the humpback whale situation. But we think it’s about to start happening in a big way.





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