Those aboard the Condor couldn't have asked for anything more.
The sun was shining, the ocean sparkling, blue and calm--and wild and wonderful creatures were popping up all over.
"Lots of friendly activity," said Fred Benko, skipper of the Santa Barbara Sea Landing-based vessel, flipping the pages of his log to a particularly good day last month.
Friendly activity? He and his customers had humpback whales putting on a show practically within arm's reach, leaping, rolling, poking their knobbed heads out of the water, waving and slapping their giant tails.
Sleeker, much bigger blue whales were shooting plumes of mist 30 feet high.
"We shut the boat down, and they came for an hour or so,' Benko said of two curious humpbacks. "Then a blue whale came and it stayed for an hour.
"We're finally ready to leave, and here come four more humpbacks, and they played with us for hours, spy-hopping, breaching, showing their flukes. . . ."
And so it went for Benko, his crew and passengers. And so it continues for anyone venturing into certain areas of the Santa Barbara Channel. So far, at least, the bulk of the activity has been between Santa Rosa Island and San Miguel Island.
This is the third summer in a row that whales have appeared to gorge on krill, tiny shrimplike crustaceans that thrive in the nutrient-rich water of the channel.
It is the second year they have shown in such force as to provide the public with a fairly reliable opportunity to view some of the largest and most remarkable creatures in the world--and scientists with a convenient opportunity to study the mysterious mammals without having to follow them.
"There are very few places we can reliably go and see whales like this," said Jay Barlow, head of the coastal marine mammal research project for the National Marine Fisheries Service. "What we're seeing now [are] animals that are normally much farther offshore. A shift in oceanic conditions and it could change back."
Meanwhile, whale watchers and scientists are making the most of the phenomenon. An NMFS research vessel left for the area last Thursday. Benko has been running trips since the whales came in June, and the Ventura-based Island Packers began running them late last month.
So far, the public has been slow to respond, perhaps because it hasn't been informed--or perhaps because it is more accustomed to watching the seasonal migration of California gray whales, southward in the winter and northward in spring and early summer.
In any event, what they are missing are much larger whales--grays reach 45-50 feet, humpbacks 60 feet and blues 100 feet--and in the case of the humpbacks, much more active whales.
Humpbacks, so-called "singing whales" because of the males' ability to vocalize eerie-sounding songs that last up to 20 minutes, can often be seen breaching and spy-hopping, or popping their heads out of the water as if to get a better look at life above the surface.
The humpback is an expert fisherman who uses a "bubble-net" technique, blowing a circle of bubbles that acts as a giant net, which gathers krill or small baitfish at the surface. The whale then charges up to get a mouthful.
Blue whales are not as bold as humpbacks, but they're not exactly shy, either. And they're much more impressive up close given their immense size. Blue whales can weigh as much as 150 tons; newborn calves can be 25 feet long and weigh 7 1/2 tons.
On whale-watching trips, it might be pointed out that a blue whale's heart is as big as a VW Bug and pumps more than 10 tons of blood through the mammal's massive body. Its tongue is as big as an African elephant, weighing up to six tons.
It might also be pointed out that blue whales once numbered about 400,000, but they were slaughtered to near-extinction by commercial whalers. There are believed to be fewer than 12,000 swimming the world's oceans today.
Humpbacks also were hard-hit, their numbers being reduced from about 100,000 to an estimated 10,000.
Both are endangered but are believed to be making slow comebacks.
Much less is known about blue whales than humpbacks, which are generally more accessible and therefore extensively researched.
Barlow said a crew of 14 is spending 30 days at sea--much of that time in the Santa Barbara Channel--trying to gather data that might give scientists a better understanding of the giant leviathans.
They are still unsure, for example, at what point blue whale calves leave their mothers. Another objective is to determine whether blue whales segregate according to size, as is believed. Another is to study their socializing habits.
A primary and long-term objective of all scientists, however, is to try to get a better handle on movements and populations of blue whales, a slow process thus far based largely on individual identifications derived from distinct markings through photographs and using mathematical formulas. Current estimates are crude, at best.
