The three sperm whales seen here were among a pod of about 15 sighted by a whale-watching vessel in the Catalina Channel about 12 miles off shore Wednesday. Photo by Chelsea Berggren, Aquarium of the Pacific.
12:01 am | The captain of a split-level whale-watching vessel who spotted a pod of about 15 sperm whales off the coast of Long Beach Wednesday said he plans to search for them again today.
Long Beach-based Harbor Breeze Cruises Capt. Dan Salas said the whales were laying on the surface of the water in the Catalina Channel, NBCLA reported.
A sea captain for 30 years, Salas reportedly said “it was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.”
A video depicting nine of the whales can be viewed by clicking here.
Salas told Pete Thomas, a former Los Angeles Times reporter-turned-blogger, on PeteThomasOutdoors.com that the first sighting was in mid-afternoon when his boat was returning from a non-whale-watching venture to Catalina Island. The second sighting, much to the delight of passengers, as well as crew members, aboard the Christopher, occurred during a 3 p.m. whale-watching excursion.
The cataceans were traveling east about 12 miles off shore and were estimated to be traveling at about eight miles per hour.
“It was a once-in-a-lifetime sighting viewing such a big pod of sperm whales,” the captain said. “Occasionally we see killer whales, lots of blue whales [in the Catalina Channel].”
The sighting was deemed “extremely rare” by Alisa Schulman-Janiger, an American Cetacean Society researcher. She told Thomas that sperm whales are occasionally spotted solitary or in very small groups off the Southern California coast.
Schulman-Janiger heads up the Los Angeles Chapter of the ACS’s Grey Whale Census and Behavior Project, a volunteer, shore-based study of the marine mammals that use the waters near and surrounding the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
She said it had been at least three decades since volunteers on the peninsula in 1976 spotted a pod of three to six sperm whales, Schulman-Janiger said. The most recent sighting, when a lone sperm whale was seen from atop the Point Vicente Interpretive Center, dates back to Dec. 10, 2005.
The pod spotted yesterday was likely a group of females with their offspring, she said. Sperm whales tend to travel in all-male groups or in larger groups of females and their young.
Aquarium of the Pacific employee Jeff, who left a comment on Thomas’ blog, was aboard the Christopher yesterday for the chance sighting.
“It was truly an amazing sight!” he wrote. “Their [sic] were about 9 that stayed right in front of the bow for about 15 minutes before each individually dived! [sic] Awesome!!!!!”
A sperm whale seen Wednesday about 12 miles off the coast of Long Beach by a group aboard a whale-watching boat squirts water out of its blow hole. Photo by Chelsea Berggren, Aquarium of the Pacific.