Whale Watching!!!

Trent arranged for Ali & I to go whale watching today and it did not disappoint! It was so thrilling to see the blow spouts and the sheer size of an actual gray whale. We didn't see any of them breech the water, but that rarely happens here because the whales are on their migration route. You can see them off the California coast on their way down to Mexico (to have their babies) and then on their way back up to Alaska (to eat, play, eat, mate, eat and eat). The guide told us that they can eat up to 50 times their own weight in food, daily! We also were able to see a special treat. Usually mothers don't have their babies until they reach the warm waters of Mexico, but we saw one that had her calf early! The guide said that the baby calf couldn't be more than a few days old! The mother didn't leave the calf's side. It was really, really, really just an awesome experience and left me in total awe of Gods creations! It was so cool!
Here is my photo journal of our trip, enjoy!

We boarded a San Diego Harbor Excursion boat right next to this huge cruise ship.
It was very massive.

Here is Ali, wearing some mighty fine sunglasses! Bugs will be proud! They might be the ugliest sunglasses on the face of the planet, but they are really awesome at keeping out the glare!

We passed the airfield on the Navy base on Coronado Island.
I thought it was kind of neat to watch this helicopter take off.

Here is a little friend that followed us the entire trip. He totally wanted some free handouts,
but our guide recommended that we ignore him because, " what goes in must come out".
Ewww, that was enough for me, I didn't share my snacks, no way!

This is the light house on Point Loma.

We saw this dolphin in the beginning of our trip,
but it didn't hang out for long. This is the only shot I got of it.

Ok, now for the good stuff...
We saw 4 different whales. We followed each one for a little while.
We got a lot of great shots of the whale's tails (called the fluke).

fluke

fluke

fluke

Here's a blow spout. You can see this whales head pretty good.
Most of the whales we saw were male juveniles. They follow the Mothers down to Mexico.

blow spout

fluke

fluke

fluke

blow

side view of fluke

Here are my photos of the Mother and her calf. The Mother is first, her blow holes are much larger than the calf's who is just behind her.

The circles in the water that you see here are called footprints. This is how you track a whale.
It shows where they came up out of the water. The juvenile males that we saw usually come up 3 times and then go down for a spell. Then back up. They can be pretty erratic and don't necessarily swim in a straight line. The calf came out of the water for about 5 breaths before heading under for just a short time and then back up for 5 more breaths.
The footprint below is from the mother and her calf.

This is just the calf.

On our way back to shore we got a closer look at a bunch of seals
who were sunning themselves and snoozing on these docks.

Of course, my pelican, it wouldn't be a complete trip to the ocean if I didn't get a shot of one. This guy is really pretty.

Snowy Egret

We got a pretty close up view of this bomber.

The guides brought up some real whale baleen (Whales have baleen instead of teeth. They use it to "sift" thru the food they take into their mouths. The baleen lets krill and small shrimp in and keeps bigger, unwanted fish and etc out.). It was neat to see close up.

I hope you enjoyed my little photo tour of our trip to see Gray Whales!