Condor Express Whale Watch.

Well...these pictures have certainly taken me a lot longer to upload, edit and post than I had initially hoped - but here they are!

It may seem like a lot of pictures, but I narrowed them down to 9 from a slightly higher 238 – which, was not an easy task by any means. So enjoy the best whale watching I have had to date, and – if you are able, take a whale watching trip aboard the Condor Express in Santa Barbara, California…DO IT! I cannot say enough about the different and amazing whale experiences I have had on that boat.


This little humpback whale would go under the surface and then after a few seconds, let out this bubble to make sure we were not looking at anything else. I am not quite convinced that this whale was bubble net feeding, I think he was too busy playing with our boat to eat.


Love how clear the water was - allowing us to see the whale's white pectoral fins. I was screaming at this point, and yelling, and talking to the...never mind.


Here you can see just how close they were to each other and to the boat, just hanging out and giving everyone (a.k.a Dahle Whale a show).


Just kept on sticking their heads up to say hello (also called spyhopping) - over and over and over again.


I wish I had zoomed more on this whale - but, this is a picture of the humpback lunge feeding. Meaning…the whale would be under water and then swim quickly up towards the surface toward a school of prey with their mouths wide open. Once they 'lunged' up and had a mouthful of water (includes plankton, krill and small fish), they then filter the salt water out of their mouth using their baleen (much like a strainer for pasta). While lunge feeding, humpbacks take fairly short dives due to the large amount of energy they use for each mouthful of food.



Whales do not smell great...at all.


In this photo you can see that humpback whales (along with all baleen whales) have two blowholes (much like mammals have two nostrils). However, not all whales have two blowholes – toothed whales (such as a killer whales, sperm whales or beluga whales) have only one.


Just saying hello...again...for over an hour.


I have to admit that this photo is my favorite when comparing the many pix snapped in my 25 years. Why is this the favorite? Well…simply, this little guy is different. To the average person, whales may seem to look very similar from type to type and especially when focusing on just one kind of whale, but if you look closely, this humpback whale has a very unique fluke (tail). Usually humpback whales have a unique black and white pattern on under their fluke (tail), which allows us the ability to tell the difference of one from another. The poor thing barley even has a tail, but continued to fluke away with all his friends – simply showing off. Who knows what happened to this whale, but my guess is that it got attacked by some sort of shark or other evil creature.

And, the excitement had to end...and I slept the whole way back to the dock. It was a perfect Sunday.