Blue whale diving near boat

On Saturday, August 24th, I had the chance to go whale watching a second time on Harbor Breeze Cruises in Long Beach and had another great trip. The boat left at 9am and headed out into a foggy soup. Once we got out of the harbor we couldn’t see anything for a hundred yards, no land, no boats, no whales. Yet, we had just come from one of the largest port complexes in the world, so you knew something was out there. We heard tankers honking their horns to alert everyone of their presence, but yet it seemed like we were all alone on the high seas searching for blue whales. It was equal parts thrilling, scary and cool.

Blue whale flukes

Thankfully, the fog started to clear and we were able to spot our first blue whale. It dove right in front of a small boat (see photo above). This blue whale surfaced a few times and gave all of us some great blue whale watching opportunities. If you take a close look at the tail, you’ll see that the left side curves up and the right side curves down. Blue whales are awesome and amazing, but the highlight of the trip ended up being a green sea turtle!

Green sea turtle

This was the first time I’ve seen a sea turtle in the wild! It was also a first for several of my whale watching friends and many of them have been on hundreds if not thousands of whale watching trips. So I felt very lucky indeed. The turtle wasn’t going far fast, it was a turtle after all. This green sea turtle was covered in barnacles, there was even a bright white barnacle on the turtle’s head, a barnacle crown!

Common dolphins

We also saw a pod of common dolphins that came over and rode the waves next to the boat. Overall, it was another amazing trip!

(Note: The blue whales are here! There were tons of great sightings this past week off Los Angeles and Orange County. This is a great time to go whale watching if you want to see the largest animal to ever live on earth.)