A Great Day at Sea!

Saturday, July 12, 2008 SFBay Whale Watching hosted members of "Seaflow" for the third of four scheduled trips. Seaflow is a nonprofit organization that works to curb ocean noise pollution. Passengers got a chance to listen to vessel and marine mammal sounds from hydrophones lowered off the boat. Seaflow discussed the findings of their prior testing and their efforts to protect marine mammals from loud, life threatening noises.


It just so happened that six California Sea Lions were ready to leave their sanctuary at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito that day too. It was time for the rescued and rehabilitated juvenile sea lions to return to their home at sea.

Lucky whale watching passengers got acquainted with the young sea lions as deck space was shared on the way to the Farallon Islands. Sounds like a party to me.


Carol Keiper, senior Naturalist on the trip, gave her usual fascinating descriptions of animals encountered along the way and shared some real baleen (the filter inside the whale’s mouth that strains gulped food from the water) with the passengers.


As if hydrophones and hitchhiking sea lions weren't enough, there were the plunge-diving-off-the-stern Brown Pelicans and the just-off-the-bow Sea Nettles.


Photographer Ed Estes got these extraordinary pictures of the Sea Nettles right below the water’s surface.

Sea Nettles can be hard to spot in the water and even harder to photograph, but conditions were just right and passengers got yet another treat.

For more of the Seaflow story have a look at the article the San Francisco Chronicle published the next day. And I'll be posting more of Ed's photos from the trip too; it was an exceptional day also for photographers! Oh, and did I mention that we saw too many Humpback Whales to count...

Photos by Ed Estes. Text by Kathleen Jacques.

Grays Give Way to Humpbacks

Over the next several weeks we'll see more Humpback Whales than Gray Whales out near the Farallon Islands in the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. About now the Grays have mostly passed by on their way north to their summer feeding grounds in the Bering Sea. We often see them pass awfully close to the Farallones during their northern migration, providing us with a nice backdrop for photographing a "blow" (the visible plume of moist air expelled from the lungs).

It's harder to spot a whale's blow when there is no contrasting backdrop and when you're scanning a seemingly endless horizon. Somehow it seems downright neighborly of the Grays to be so obliging.

Gray Whales are "mysticetes", commonly referred to as "baleen" whales. Baleen is an amazing feeding system whereby these 40 plus foot-long marine mammals can feed on masses of tiny schooling fish and krill by filtering gulps of water and prey through the built-in strainers in their mouths. It is hard to imagine that early whalers thought of Grays as ferocious given the baleen feeding system and their well documented curious and gentle approach to boats.

On this recent SF Bay Whale Watching trip passengers saw both Gray Whales and Humpback Whales. It seems that once the Humpbacks come our way during their northbound migration, we see more of them than the Grays during their migration. Maybe the Grays travel solo more often or maybe they just have fewer numbers, but for one reason or another the Humpbacks seem more plentiful.

The 2 Humpbacks in the photo above were traveling together, unlike the Gray who traveled alone. Now that the Humpbacks are coming through our waters, we'll surely see solo travelers but we're also apt to see small groups as well as mother/calf pairs. There is something extra thrilling about seeing three or four 90,000 pound Humpbacks cruising through your neighborhood.

(Humpback Whale above; Gray Whale below.)

The fishermen tell us that there is plenty of whale food in the Gulf of the Farallones this summer so Grays or Humpbacks, whales should abound.

Photos by Ed Estes. Text by Kathleen Jacques.