November 5, 2025

Our afternoon trip, which was also our sunset trip, began with good looks at herons, egrets, gulls, cormorants, pelicans and one black-crowned night heron in Quivira Basin at the floating bait dock. Our flippered friends were quite vocal, the sea lions were mostly resting with one in the water jugging—holding long flippers out of the water for thermoregulation—and about 12 weighing down the end of the floating dock and mooring ball.
After reaching the 3-mile mark offshore, we found two humpback whales migrating south, coming up to the surface every 6-minutes or so. It was a spectacular sight, seeing the whales swimming toward the border and coming to the surface every few minutes. After some time with this pair of humpbacks, we headed west toward the lowering sun and found two more southbound humpbacks.
We got some good looks and were able to obtain “captures” via our phones of these animals. We can become citizen scientists by submitting our photos and geographic location to happy whale dot com, a website developed by Dr. Ted Cheeseman. Over 100,000 individual humpbacks have been identified in both the northern and southern hemisphere. There are 14 DPS’s or distinct populations segments found throughout the world. These Mexican born humpbacks are still threatened with extinction, But 9 years ago, 9 of the 14 populations were taken off of the endangered status. Good news for these leviathans.
We had a spectacular sunset with a navy ship near the sun. Then, an amazing full-moon rise over the city. Hope to see on a boat soon. —Naturalist Greg McCormack