Day 5 - Final Day of the Trip!

Writing this blog a day late. I did not have a chance to write last night as it was the group's final night, and we went out for a few drinks and lots of laughs. Well, no orcas this week. Sadly we were always in the wrong spots when they visited the area. It is a vast ocean, and that is nature and the difficulties of seeking out wildlife. A huge thanks go out to our friends who joined us this week. It was such a great trip, and you guys made it fun.

We did find a massive school of Mobula rays which we spent a lot of time with. Conditions made things difficult for a while, and ten-knot winds kicked up the swells. There were white caps everywhere which made searching for big animals difficult. We got lucky with the mobulas because they were popcorning when we found them. If it weren't for them jumping, we never would have seen this school.

Thankfully they were, and we finished the day dropping down, snapping images and videos of them. It was a great experience and a hell of a lot of fun. The winds died down as we were motoring back to port, which made trying to scan for big fishies a bit easier. Sadly we ran into nothing along the way home. Overall it was a good trip. It was not perfect, but we made the most of it and had a lot of fun along the way. Until the next one, my friends - miss you guys already.

Our buddy Jay dropping down to grab video of the mobulas. In his hands is the Monstro Red camera, what a beast!

Until the next one my sketchy friends!!!

Thank you all for reading and following along with my journey. Tomorrow week two of our orca and Mobula ray trip, begins!

Day Three - Come on Orcas!

Day three and well, the challenge continues. Damn, I know I like a challenge but ok - orcas, it is time to come and say hi. Today was a beautiful day. There was a slight breeze, and the ocean was flat, flat flat! It was perfect. These are the days you dream of when you go out on the sea.

Unless you are chumming, then it is too calm, and there is not enough current, and your chum slick goes nowhere.

But if you are not chumming for sharks and looking for whales and dolphins, this is what you dream of - flat, perfect seas, not much current with a perfect sky. Today was perfection with excellent visibility as well. We just needed some orcas to make it EPIC. Sadly we did not find them.

Rich chilling on the boat. Being patient. Thank you brother.

Something changed in the water over the last few days, and we are just trying to figure out what. Sadly we are not even close to figuring out what it is, all we know is - it was enough for the orcas to change their patterns, and now the game is trying to see what they plan next.

We made the most of our time out there playing with a pod of very dark-colored bottlenose dolphins. They were almost black; they were so dark. I think they were just tanned by the sun. Hammerheads skin tans, so why wouldn't a dolphin's skin?

Even our Captain was helping us try to find orcas, steering the boat in his own unique way.

We took a bunch of surface pics of them and also a bunch of underwater pics. The majority of those underwater images were crap because the dolphins would not come near us. We tried, though, repeatedly to take close-up photos of them, but they were not having it.

We finished the day a bit frustrated because the orcas are still a no show, but we understand this game - tomorrow is another day, and we all ready for it!

Thank you for reading and I hope to see you out in the world… somewhere… anywhere!

Day Two Was a Bit of a Challenge.

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Well, damn, we finished up day two and no orcas. In fact, there were zero reports of orcas from any of our contacts today. We have a network of ocean people we chat with helping us with any news of orca sightings in the area, and today there was none. There has been solid orca activity in the area since Thursday of last week, I have been getting those orca reports.

Today… Nada!

Jay snapping the speed racers.

Maybe they needed a break from people, or they are just full and not in the mood to hunt today. I am not sure why the orcas were not in the area today; all I know is that it gets me excited for tomorrow because they will be hungry and out for Mobulas or even dolphins.

Which reminds me, we spent the morning with a super pod of common dolphins. They were hunting very close to shore, so the water they were in was very murky, so we did not try to get in with them; we just enjoyed watching the craziness from the boat. Richard, Al, and I grabbed our topside cameras and shot the spectacle.

It is not easy capturing stills of porpoising dolphins, especially since you have no idea where and when they will jump out of the water. I shot over 300 images in a short amount of time, and almost all of them are crap. I did manage to shoot a couple of keepers; but the rest are garbage. I set my camera up with a shutter speed of 2500 to compensate for the fast motion of the dolphins and the movement of the boat, and it worked for freezing the motion. But the 7D has a slow auto focus and it is difficult to capture tack sharp images because of it. However, every once in a while things come together and you can make magic happen.

After the dolphins, we continued our search for orcas; sadly, we did not find them today, and we searched all day. In fact, we left the marina at sunset. As we were leaving a grey fox trotted across the marina dirt road and into the thick bushes when it saw us. sadly no pictures. Foxes normally come out at night, so it was a nice treat as were leaving.

Anyway, tomorrow is another day, and I am looking forward to whatever the ocean may gift us with.

QUOTE OF THE DAY… Okay, I told the boys that I would throw in tonite's quote in the blog from our buddy Garin. It's officially the quote of the day; I know you guys will not understand what it means, but this has turned into a boys trip with all the nonsense that goes with it, and I said I would share;

"Just tell them you are the chief Barnacle on the Grey Whale, you f@#king Donut!"

As I said, it won't make sense to you all, but I had a good laugh when he said it.

Travel Day... Getting Fired up!!!

Travel day. Today I picked up the group that is joining us for this trip. We are short two guests who sadly were locked up by their country from Israel. They were not allowed to travel here to Baja, which is heartbreaking; they were just a week away from this trip happening when their government decided it was not safe to travel. I am so sorry, guys.

This morning I left Cabo with our buddy Al who is joining us on this trip. We Ubered it to the airport to pick up our rental van. After that, we went to the airport to pick up the rest of our group joining us. In total, four guests are joining us this week. All of them eager to get out on the water and look for orcas and anything else the Ocean wishes to gift us with.

The boys. Al (wearing his Game Face), Jay, Garin and Richard.

We drove to our hotel, checked in then went down to a small restaurant to eat a quick dinner and get to know each other better. Everyone joining us had traveled with me before, so I knew them, but they did not know each other. It was fun small talk and easy to see that this group of sketchy guys (inside joke), we're going get along, and it was going to be a fun week. Reports of orcas this week have been good, so I am very optimistic about our chances for a good week. We will see, tomorrow is our first day on the water, and I am super eager to get out there and start looking.

Insane!!!

Today the reports were that the orcas spent the day in Cabo Pulmo, and the video clip I saw was insane. They captured a video of the orca breaching extremely high… talk about EPIC!

After we returned from dinner, I grabbed my topside camera and decided to see what the local bird activity was like. The place we are staying at is a small seaside town, and there seems to be a lot of birds here, so it looks like it could be fun.

After a few minutes, I encountered a cat walking across the street. Normally domestic cats do not catch my attention, nor do I ever take pictures of them. However the tail and the markings on this cat captivated me. The bob tail and the color patterns on this cat made me wonder if maybe this cats momma might have danced with a wildcat, more specifically a bobcat? I snapped a few images of it, and after studying the images it left me thinking it is part wildcat. The cats eyes are captivating, and it has tiny tuffs on its ears… so who knows? It is an amazing looking cat though.

bad image of the hummingbird. But what a beauty.

I found a beautiful hummingbird feeding on some flowers. It was a species I had never seen before called the Xantus's hummingbird. It hung out for a little while, but then it flew off. I got a crappy image of it, but now… I really want to capture a nice shot of it, so I will be using any spare time to find it.

I also managed to find a couple of dead palm trees with some nesting woodpeckers and starlings in them. I focused my time there trying to capture some behavior images, which I am pretty happy with. I will try for more later, if I have time.

Overall it was a great day. Now we are all retired to our rooms to prep gear and get a good night's sleep… the adventure officially kicks off in the morning… FINALLY!

Starling momma feeding her chick.

Thank you for reading and I hope to see you out in the world… somewhere… anywhere!

A New Adventure Begins... Baja!

I am sitting at the airport in Reynosa, Mexico waiting for my plane to pick me up and take me to Baja for our orca and Mobula ray expedition. Super fired up about getting there already. Baja is a fantastic place, and this time of year, the ocean is thick with wildlife. These are exploratory trips because you never know what you will find. Like our pelagic trips in November off Baja, every day is different.

the adventure begins…

the orca pod we encountered.

On this trip, the goal is to find orcas, but we will also be stopping to check out any other wildlife we may find, including the tens of thousands of Mobula rays out there right now. So the potential for great encounters is there and could be epic when we see the large groups of these beauties.

Plus, this is also prime-time smooth hammerhead season off Baja, and they are probably here because of the mobulas as well. I flew out a day early to join up with one of the local shark operators to spend a morning looking for these guys. Pelagic sharks are always fun. They are hard work to chum in, but when they finally do arrive, they are so much fun.

smooth hammerhead

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mating mobula rays

We ran our first trip off Baja for orcas back in 2019, and thankfully it was a success. We found them on day one and had some fantastic encounters with them. We also spent some time with mating Mobula rays which were unique and beautiful to experience. So our first trip was a truly memorable experience, which got us fired up about running another one. Sadly due to the corona crisis, we had to cancel our 2020 trip.

Despite a few hiccups along the way, we are all set to run the trip this season, and now we are just a plane ride away from it all beginning!

THE CORONA CHRONICLES BEGINS…
The goal is to share as much as I can with you guys daily—Internet permitting, of course. I should have wifi at our hotel where we will be staying to share updates nightly (when possible) with you guys. I will try not to bore you with too much writing. I am just trying to find an interesting way to share our world with you all, along with the highs and lows of the travel life in this post covid world. I tried it with videos years ago, but it was challenging to record/edit and then post, especially with sketchy wifi, so I gave up the ghost.

Anyway, they are now boarding the plane, so I got to go. But super fired up about this trip - well, two trips, we are running this one for two weeks, back-to-back, and I am excited about sharing it all with you guys.

Tomorrow morning I head out to look for smooth hammerheads… so look for a report late Tomorrow night.

big orca male we encountered in 2019.

Thank you for reading and I hope to see you out in the world… somewhere… anywhere!