Humpback Whales Feeding in Santa Barbara!

The sea state couldn't have been better today as we were blessed with calm seas, sunny skies, and a whole bunch of marine life!
Our trip started out as we headed towards the Eastern Channel. A report from our dear friend Holly Lohuis had us heading in that direction. Upon arriving in the eastern channel, blows started appearing on the horizon. The first pair of whales we watched was two humpbacks known as Lemur and CRC-11716. Lemur soon breached completely out of the water right behind our boat, startling our crew and passengers. He continued to breach another 8 times or so. Oddly enough as the pair made their way towards some baitballs of anchovies, a gray whale came out of nowhere and started following them! While we didn't see the gray whale feeding at the surface like the humpbacks, we do think it was opportunistically feeding with the whales, something gray whales don't normally do.
Over the next few hours we witnessed lots of surface feeding as lunchtime for the whales came to be. At one point we had 6 humpbacks feeding on the same baitball! With dolphins, sea lions, and humpbacks for as far as the eye could see, it was one of our bet days on the ocean so far in 2024. We can't wait to see what the next week of beautiful weather has in store!
Happy Whaling,
The SBWW Crew