Sub Sea Tours Whale Watching
Captain Kevin
9:00 AM Daily Whale Watching tours during school breaks – summer, winter and spring. Schedule varies for the rest of the year, but in general, tours run on weekends and holidays. We'll go Whale Watching any time we have whales, good weather and willing customers. PLEASE CALL for reservations.
Tours run two and a half to three and a half hours.
We also will run an afternoon trip depending on weather and demand. (805) 772-9463
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June 2013 Whale Log
by Rouvaishyana, Naturalist and Deckhand Aboard the Dos Osos
Rouvaishyana
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June 8
After heading nearly nine miles offshore, we found two blue whales, a mother and calf, at about four and a half miles from the harbor entrance. It had taken us three hours to find the whales. Our trips are generally three to three and a half hours, but we didn’t want to shortchange anyone, so we asked everyone how they would feel about spending some time with the whales. Naturally everyone wanted to. We stayed with the whales about 45 min., then went back to Morro Bay. This trip lasted four and a half hours.
June 9
Today it was considerably easier to find whales; we saw spouts within an hour of leaving the harbor. The spouts turned out to be a feeding humpback whale about one and three-quarters miles offshore, and we spend the next two hours watching it come to the surface, sometimes with its mouth visible and open. Also a minke whale came by. This species usually doesn’t spend much time at the surface, but it added another element to our trip.
June 11
The boat was full on this day. We saw a few groups of two or three feeding humpback whales at a time. We also saw four blue whales in the same vicinity, and at one point it seemed that the boat was literally surrounded by whales.
On the afternoon trip, we returned to the same area and again saw several humpback and blue whales feeding. The blue whales are so enormous that they appear like surfacing submarines. This was about five and a half to six miles from shore, too far to be appreciated from land, and in 320-380 feet of water.
June 15
We found two humpback whales in about an hour, about the same search time as on June 9. We spent two hours with them, and one whale breached for about 10 minutes right before we knew we had to head in. We saw two more humpbacks on the way back to the harbor, but did not stay with them.
June 16
We did not see whales on this trip, but heard a radio report from another boat captain that there were feeding humpback whales off Cambria — too far for us to go at the speed we travel. It is important to note that even though May to October is the feeding season for humpback whales off the San Luis Obispo County coastline, the whales spread out. On any given day, they may be off Morro Bay or points we can easily reach, or they may be off Pismo Beach or Cambria/San Simeon, well beyond our range. We may hear reports on that day or a later day, but if the whales are out of range, it means that they are present in our county but we won’t see them from our boat. We encourage whale watchers to keep trying, as we see whales on about 75-80% of our trips.
WHALES HO!
Photos of Rouvaishyana Used Courtesy of Mike Baird
Photo of Captain Kevin Used Courtesy of Aprille Lipton |
All content copyright Slo Coast Journal, Rouvaishyana, and Sub Sea Tours. Do not use without express written permission. |
