Farallones Trip with Oceanic Society 7/20/25
We went out to the Farallones aboard the Salty Lady with The Oceanic Society for some whale watching. Of course, on a trip to the Farallones, you’re likely to see a lot more than just whales. It’s a very biodiverse, fascinating area to visit. The previous week’s trip saw a large number and variety of whales including Humpbacks, Blue Whales, Fin Whales and Gray Whales. We didn’t have quite the numbers or variety of whales this time, but what we missed in quantity was made up for with quality. Sorting and selecting photos was an even more difficult prospect than normal. Any one of the breach sequences would normally be the highlight of the year for me. I had almost a dozen such breach sequences to look through and decide which ones were the best. And then there was the task of picking which of the photos in the sequences to choose. I liked all of them, and found unique and interesting things in every one of them. It was killing me to have to cut any of them. I did my best to try and choose interesting shots that didn’t feel too repetitious or monotonous. And that was just the whale photos. Then there were the Tufted Puffins, Mola Molas, Stellar Sea Lions, California Sea Lions, Harbor Seals, Pigeon Guillemots, Fur Seals, and Common Murres by the thousands. The on-board naturalists were fantastic in spotting, ID’ing and pointing out as many critters as possible.
I’m posting considerably more photos than I normally do. Some may suggest that I could have cut a fair bit more, and others may suggest I cut too many. Hopefully I struck a reasonable balance. As a bit of an orientation to the photos, here is a little information on how they’re organized. First and foremost, they are not in chronological order. The first five photos are basically what I picked as the highlights from the trip. Then there’s a large chunk of Humpback Whale photos. That is the only whale I got decent shots of. I did get some shots of a Gray Whale, but none were good enough to post. The last whale shot is there for fun - it’s what happens when you had been photographing Harbor Seals at a distance with a 600mm lens and a whale surfaces right next to the boat. After the whales are some shots of a Mola Mola, though you’d be forgiven for not recognizing it, given it was underwater and I was not. One of our naturalists got some underwater footage with a GoPro on a stick. Next comes the Tufted Puffins - very cool birds. Then Fur Seals, Pigeon Guillemots, Harbor Seals, a baby Pigeon Guillemot, Common Murres, Brandt’s Cormorant, Stellar Sea Lions, and then some shots of the islands, a few of the researchers, some shots of the boat ride and a kite surfer we saw in the bay as we returned to port.
I only got ID’able fluke shots of one whale - it was the whale that was doing most of the breaching. I ran it through the “fast ID” on HappyWhale.com but it didn’t come up with a result. Admittedly the fluke doesn’t have many markings on it, but I was a little surprised. It’s possible it’s a whale that isn’t in their database yet. I’ll do a normal submission and they should be able to ID it and if it’s not in the database, they will add it.
It was a fantastic trip and I hope to get to do it again at some point. Enough words - time for the pictures!
