2009 continues to be phomominal whalewatching! Were having close encounters nearly every trip. Yesterdays 7:30am tour we were stopped to listen with the hydrophones when a Mother, calf, escourt appeared near by. We turned on a recording we took earlier in the season and played it over our eight speaker entertainment system. The conditions were epic, the water was glassy calm, there wasn't a bredth of wind, the air was clear, views of the five volcanoes were stunning. Suddenly we saw a torquois flash under the boat. Ten feet below the vessel lay the escourt whale. The white undersides of the pectoral fins appear a brilliant blue -touquois against the clear blue Pacific. He was listening to the whale songs being played over the stereo. Then scaring everyone mother and calf exhaled with a loud burst of air on the other side of the vessel. All three whales continued to circle around and right beneath us for another fifteen minutes or so. We were ecstatic with the encounter and were hesitant to leave but all around us were other whales doing dazzelling displays of breeching, pec fin waving and tail slapping. We ended with a competition pod of males agressively challenging each other for favors of a female who happened to have a young calf.
