Attention to all those living in the Los Angeles area we are entering the last two weeks of gray whale watch season! So if you want to get out and see some whales now is the time to do it. March 20th was the annual Ultimate Whale Watch trip sponsored by the American Cetacean Society’s Los Angeles Chapter (aka ACS-LA) and we saw a fin whale that was unusually friendly and even approached the boat and circled it to everyone’s delight and astonishment.

The fin whale is the second largest whale averaging 75 to 80 feet in length and also the fastest of the baleen whales, sometimes referred to as the greyhound of the sea. Plus, fin whales are really cool looking with dark greenish-black backs and asymmetrical coloring along the jaw with white on the right side and gray on the left. We could see the white jaw underwater as the whale hovered just under the surface near the boat. Then we saw two humpback whales and later a few gray whales showed up and one of them breached! No one got a photo of that because it was totally unexpected.

On Saturday I went whale watching on the Voyager out of Redondo Beach and another fin whale approached the boat and circled it really close! So cool. Everyone was freaking out, including me. Whales are simply amazing. We didn’t see any gray whales that time. But many are traveling north right now on the last leg of their annual 10,000 to 14,000 mile road trip. Get out and see them before it’s too late. Or you can always wait until next year because they will be back, it’s just a matter of time.