Whale Watching Around Catalina Island
This is the story and pictures of my March '04 all day Whale Watching trip around Catalina. We saw THOUSANDS of Dolphin! The "Floating Fiesta" as it was called was an ACS trip with the 22nd Street Landing boat company that also has regular Whale Watching trips during the Gray Whale migration season.
It was an outstanding trip! The morning started off with quite a bit of fog but kept clearing. It was pretty much overcast the whole day with just a brief patch of sunshine as we went to the other side of Catalina Island.
When we started out the seas were extremely calm. This makes for wonderful viewing except for that fog! Of course we passed the standard Sealions on a buoy leaving the Harbor. One was very small and was tagged indicating it had been a rescue. Based on his size he had probably only recently been released. All three Sealions were males. I learned if a sealion is tagged on the left it is a male and the right indicates female (just remember women are always right... *grin*).
We headed out of the Harbor and it wasn't too long before we spotted some Dolphin. As we got closer we could tell they were Common Dolphin and there were MANY of them. It was a big pod, probably a thousand, but they were very spread out. They were quite active and playful with the boat. You could see how they would deliberately swim over to the boat just to bow ride... even from a distance.
We watched the Dolphin for about 45 minutes with near constant bow riding. They also love to ride the wake behind but I am always in front so don't see that. Every where you looked there were Dolphin. Common Dolphin are very active and quite often we would see them leaping out of the water in various ways. They are so much fun to watch! The water was very clear but without much sun good pictures can be hard to get.
(as you can see in the pictures the sun was a problem - everything is rather gray and you can't see deep into the water)
We saw one Common Dolphin (below and left) that had a big white patch as well as a couple small spots. It was really neat looking and looked natural rather then like a scar. The naturalist on the boat said she has seen something like that on occassion but it's not common.
Whale Tales - Stories and Photos
~Catalina Whale Watch Trip p1~
Photos and Information pages
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