Sunday, January 15, 2012

Whale Watching on Loma Point

Today we wanted a gentle drive out, so decided to go to Loma Point, a headland on the far side of San Diego. They built a lighthouse there, which is now a National Monument. From San Diego the headland can be seen a mile or two to the north, however from the Headland you get an amazing view of the entire region, all the way into Mexico.
We went to the visitor centre and had a look around, noticing that you could borrow binoculars, so we were able to get brilliant views of the whole area. The weather was calm with medium high cloud cover, so it was not too bright, just right for looking around.
San Diego was laid out beneath us, we could see all the downtown skyscrapers, the big navy ships, the miitary aircraft going in and out of their airbase as well as all the ships going in and out of the bay, just beneath us. It was very interesting.
However the real fun began when we turned our attention to the seaward side of the headland, as there is a special lookout for whale watching. We stopped there for our picnic lunch listening to people looking enthusiastically for whales. After lunch we had a look for ourselves, without much luck. All we saw were a couple of pod of dolphins, still that was fun. The sea was absolutely flat calm, except where the rollers hit the beach, where we could see people surfing beneath us.
After a while we noticed that among the many small fishing and leisure boats (it was Saturday) were a couple of boats with lots of people on, these were Whale Watching Cruise ships, also a very large yacht. All attention was paid to these ships as the cruised beneath us, about half a mile off shore, because if we couldn't see whales, perhaps they could, as they are the experts.
Sure enough after a while the yacht started to circle and we could see something in the water! We couldn't see a whale, but something was making a gentle wake on the water. As the yacht circled one of the Whale Watchers approached and stopped, so we the view was that there was definitely a whale there. Then it broke surface, not spectacularly, but it was definitely a whale, we had seen our first whale! The a whole scene played out before us as the Yacht followed the whale and the other cruise ship had a quick look then  disappeared to the North. Shortly after the whale started to spout and break the water, not the spectacular 'breach' but enough for us to easily watch its progress South past us about half a mile off shore, the binoculars were very helpful as we watched it for about half an hour braking surface and spouting. After it had passed by we packed up, returned the bins. and drove back to the trailer having immensely enjoyed watching the whale today.

1 comment:

  1. Glad to hear you are enjoying the sun! Whale watching is fun but I found I spent so long trying to get "the photo" that I missed half of them as looking at life through the camera lens is very limiting. I am still hopeful of some good shots in Hawaii.

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