DANA POINT – A pod of Biggs transient killer whales making their way along the coast on Tuesday thrilled San Clemente High science seniors aboard the Ocean Institute’s Sea Explorer.
The Sea Explorer was two miles off the coast of South Laguna when Capt. Mike Bursk spotted the killer whales. Last week, a group of 50 killer whales were spotted offshore.
These killer whales are mammal-eating orcas that hunt harbor seals, minke whales and gray whale calves. They live in small groups and travel from Southern California to the Arctic. They are family-oriented. Some stay with their mother for life. Bursk alerted the students when he first spotted a large, 20-foot-long male traveling with six family members.
“Initially they were diving and appeared to be hunting,” said Bursk, who has run the Sea Explorer for the Ocean Institute for 17 years. “Then they started surface paddling and did bow-riding with us just like dolphins.”
The killer whales were traveling up the coast and were last seen off Newport Beach just before noon.
“The students were so excited,” said Leslie Kretschmar, a crew member on the Ocean Explorer. “We, as the crew, really emphasized to them how rare of an opportunity today was.”
Bursk said he had been the first last week to spot the group of 50 or more offshore killer whales last Wednesday while on a trip to do ocean core sampling. These killer whales are known to be elusive and live far from land. Experts say their range stretches from Southern California to the Bering Sea, and their social structure and prey preferences are still unknown. They are usually seen in large groups with more than 50 or more and hunt fish and sharks.
But the whales were at least two miles away. Unlike other whale watching charters, Bursk said he couldn’t just take off and look for the killer whales and put the information out to Frank Brennan, a captain with Dana Wharf Sportfishing and Whale watching.
On Monday, Capt. Mike Redlew was out on the La Espada off Palos Verdes when he saw whales blowing in the distance off Point Vicente about four miles off the Trump National Golf Course. In an hour, he spotted at least 100 sperm whales off the coast of Point Fermin. Sperm whales are the largest of the toothed whales and the largest toothed predator. They were last seen off the coast in 2012.
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At first it was a pod of 30-40 whales. Then toward Catalina Island, he and his crew saw at least 80 more. The pod was a mile wide, traveling about 3.1 knots. They were heading southeast.
The sperm whales were fluking two to three at a time.
“When you first come up and see a whale blow, you never expect to see a sperm whale,” said Capt. Dan Salas, who has been working the water for Harbor Breeze Cruises for 30 years. “I doesn’t register until you get closer. Then everybody looks at each other, and it’s like ‘is that what we just saw?”
In 30 years, Salas has only seen them on one other occasion. He saw them in nearly the same spot in 2012. Then he saw a pod of 20 sperm whales.
“This week we’ve had two blue whales, a pod of eight humpbacks, thousands of dolphins and now killer whales again today,” Salas said. It’s got to make you think what’s going on in the ocean. We’ve never had humpbacks year round. Are there more whales? Is the ocean cleaner, and there’s more food?”
Alisa Schulman-Janiger, a whale researcher, was on the La Espada and saw at least 40 sperm whales spread out in small groups. The whales were all moving the same direction south, southeast.
“Every direction we looked, there were whales all swimming in that direction at about an average of 3.5 miles per hour. Nearly all looked like females and their offspring. Females are much smaller than adult males.”
Schulman-Janiger has seen singles and pairs of males feeding off Palos Verdes many times in nearly 35 years.
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen a nursery pod and this was a super mega-pod,” she said.
Schulman-Janiger said if there were over 100 sperm whales that would make this the largest documented sperm whale sighting off California, according Jay Barlow, a whale scientist with Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla.
Dave Weller, a marine biologist who leads the whale migration program for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said Tuesday, he doesn’t have a good explanation for the abundance of whale species sighted.
“Nature is unpredictable,” he said.
For boat captains like Bursk and Salas, who have both been on the water for decades, the recent sightings have been a rare treat.
“Everyone was talking about it.” he said. “The rarer it is, the more sensational it becomes. Orcas and sperm whales are like the Holy Grail of cetacean watching.”
Contact the writer: 714-796-2254 or eritchie@scng. com or on Twitter:@lagunaini
