whales!!!

I have a ton of stuff to do today (due to too much slacking off yesterday) so let me get right to the point.

First–Dana Point, California. Between LA and San Diego, absolutely beautiful, and WHALES. Whale-watchers are seeing record numbers of gray whales migrating this spring, and I was lucky enough to go see for myself.

Second–Captain Dave’s Dolphin and Whale Watching Safari. There are other whale-watching tours, but Captain Dave’s is rated best on Yelp and TripAdvisor. But what really made me choose them over others was that Captain Dave is dedicated to whales and the ocean. He made a documentary, wrote a children’s book, and started the first whale-disentanglement team in Orange County. Plus you can look back over their tour history and see that they pretty much always find whales.

I really needed to see whales on my whale-watching tour, guys. If I hadn’t…there would have been tears.

Third–new camera, my birthday present. I loved my old camera, but I’d been an idiot with it (do not stick your camera out car windows to take pictures. Don’t do it.) and there was dust on the sensor. Also it had started freezing at times, and then I’d have to take the battery out to reset it. Grr.

So. The results of this marvelous coming-together of awesome (Dana Point, Captain Dave’s, and new camera)

Three gray whales.

Can you believe how still that water is? The captain couldn’t. He said he hadn’t seen a day like that in decades. Those buildings on the horizon? Are actually over the horizon from where we were. It was a trick of the haze and the calm, that bent the light over the horizon.

Two fin whales. Our captain told us it was a mother and calf. We saw a lot more of the calf, as it waited near the surface while Mom dove for food to keep making the milk it needed. Here they are coming together after her dive.

Here’s momma, alone.

Now, keep in mind. This fin is not this.

It’s this.

Fin whales are the second-largest animal on earth. The captain said the tail of the momma was one of the largest he’d ever seen.

Dolphins!

The captain had given up on dolphins, as our tour-time was over. He went by a “slightly angled” route going back to the harbor to check out a spot dolphins had been seen, but when we got there the water was flat and boring (except not boring because being out at sea was amazing even when there was nothing to look at but sea). So we headed on in, and suddenly DOLPHINS.

That’s my shadow in the curl of the dolphin. They were under the boat, they were playing in the bow wave of the boat, they were showing off, they were awesome. It’s possible I was jumping up and down and crying and got several pictures of my lens cap along with the dolphins.†

And then, on our last day (we only had four days, including seven hours of driving each way), from the beach I got this. I was wondering what that dark thing was out there, so I zoomed and zoomed and got this shot.