Off Whale-watching Dancing with Penguins and the Barking Seals

February 11, 2014  

This morning, Tuesday, we headed out on a Zodiac on to the cold waters of the maritime park San Carlos III to go whale watching.   The bay is gorgeous, surrounded by the snow covered peaks of the South Andes, at the actual end of continental South America.   All land south of here is islands, not physically attached to the continent.

Leaving on the Zodiac rubber boats

Off we go!

The zodiacs hold about 12 people, 8-10 passengers and two or so crew.  They are rubber rafts with outboard motors that probably will do about 30 knots when wide open.   When they are wide open on the swells of the Straits of Magellan,  be ready to get wet.

Whale Tail

Whale going under our boat--He is well-known and playful

Our first siting of a humpback whale

Whale watching is a wet business in small boats.   The ocean spray can come over the edge as you bounce along the waves.   But at the same time in this difficult climate where the temperature ON the water scarcely reaches 45F (6C) you can be sure you are going to be cold.   Add to that the rain that falls on you as the low level clouds pass and you can be sure too that you are going to be wet, very wet.  (As John writes this we have been back aboard about two hours and our pants are still drying out.)

But the scenery and seeing the whales as they spout, flick their tails and almost come up under the zodiacs is phenomenal, brilliant, and fantastic.  The whales we saw today are about 60 feet long, live to 80 years or so, cannot be sexed by sight, and move between this San Carlos III bay and sites as far north as Colombia and Panama for their winter homes where they mate and the females give birth one year later.  They can travel slowly but they do put the miles behind them when they move about the bays and canals here.  The particular pod we saw today comes back to the same area near Prince Rupert Island every year.   

The only way to tell the sex of these humpback whales is through a DNA test.  We are sure the whales certainly can tell their sex, but this is not allowed to mere humans by sight.   The females take a year to gestate and give birth to one child per pregnancy, no twins.  The young whales stay with their mothers for one year until they head off by themselves.   They feed on krill and fish.

Sometimes at sea you see the whales with seals around them, and many birds, often cormorants and sometimes albatross, who follow them.  Penguins come around them to play in the waters and probably eat whale detritus.  The exhalation from the spout of the whale stinks.  Whales obviously have bad breath although they do not have teeth.

There are several colonies of sea lions on the shores here.   We saw a large colony on Prince Rupert Island where they live next to their lunches and dinners—the penguins.  We watched as one penguin turned into sea lion lunch.  Not sure whether the sea lion ate the feathers as well.   The penguins try to be careful and live above the shoreline where the sea lions keep their eyes our for  possible meals.  We are not sure if the sea lions hide under the kelp along the shore.

Lunch for us was a big buffet, spent at our table.  No penguinl