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DANA POINT — A blue whale found feeding about eight miles outside of Dana Point Harbor is the season’s first to be seen off Orange County waters.

The nearly 75-foot whale was spotted by Capt. Chuck Gathers and Craig DeWitt while on a private whale watch charter for Capt Dave’s Dolphin and Whale Safari.

The two men spotted the back of the whale and then saw it blow and traveled a bit closer to get a look around noon on Wednesday, May 9.

“It was feeding the whole time,” DeWitt said. “It kept circling around krill and some of it was on the surface where it was side-feeding.”

When they returned to the location on their second charter trip, the whale was still feeding there.

While the first of the season blue whale sighting is always a highlight for local whale-watch charters, seeing the animal feed was even better and a good indicator of a possible plentiful season for blue whales off the Orange County coastline, DeWitt said.

“Over the past year, the water has been so warm that we haven’t seen a lot of algae,” DeWitt said. “We’ve started to see more of it and we’ve been thinking it will be a good blue whale season. Today was proof of that.”

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Killer whale season in the Monterey Bay Blue whales are typically seen May through October off the coast of Southern California. The whales migrate to the waters off the U.S. West Coast to feed on krill, a very small shrimp-like crustacean.

The blue whale is a protected species after being hunted nearly to extinction in the early 1900s. Ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear continue to be risks. In 2016, there were four reports of entangled blues whales off the U.S. West Coast.