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Whale And Dolphin Watching Is Fun
By CruiseDirector | March 13, 2010
Most people say they were “never the same” after their whale and dolphin watching excursions. When a curious whale swims up to your boat or flicks his tale to wave at you, it’s hard to feel like they can’t understand you in some way. Dolphins, in particular, are intensely curious about humans and thrive off interaction. “I get up to the perfect surf — and suddenly, I notice a bottle-nose dolphin swimming right up to cut me off and steal my ride,” one veteran San Diego surfer recalls. Whale and dolphin cruises can be taken around the world at different times of the year. Here are some of the gentle giants you might spot on your next trip.
The humpback whale is one of the most common creatures spotted when whale watching. There are about 30,000 to 40,000 humpbacks in the wild today, which makes up about 30 to 35% of the overall population. In the summer, they frequent New England, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Iceland, California, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Antarctica. In the winter, they migrate to warmer climes like the Dominican Republic’s Samana Province, France’s Bay of Biscay, Hawaii, Mexico’s Puerto Vallarta, Australia and New Zealand, Cape Town, Costa Rica and the Tongan Islands. Humpback whales are especially exciting to see during their breeding season, when up to forty males may gather to court one female with tail-lobbing, breaching several feet in the air, tail-slapping, spy-hopping, peduncle throwing and charging.
On your next whale and dolphin watching trip, you may also encounter gray whales. These great migrators have been known to travel up to 12,430 miles in their pods from Alaska in the summer to Mexico in the winter. Most gray whale watching enterprises are stationed between Monterey and San Diego, as they migrate down to Baja, California to breed and give birth. Grays used to be the most intimidating whales to hunt because these “devil fish” seemed unafraid to charge humans when they felt threatened. Grays were removed from the endangered species list in 1994 and now number around 26,000.
The whale watching season varies from place to place, depending on the migratory pattern of the whales. For instance, Southern California offers the best glimpses of the migrating humpbacks from December through March. In spring, summer and fall, tourists clamor to Northern California ports like Monterey Bay and San Francisco. Southwest Pacific whales can be seen around Australia from May to November. In New England, the season runs from mid-spring through October. There seems to be no real “season” for warmer coastal waters in Thailand and the Caribbean Sea, yet whale and dolphin watching opportunities are plentiful all year round.
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