Blue Whales (balaenoptera musculus)
The giant blue whale is an animal that defies all superlatives. It is the biggest, heaviest, loudest and fastest growing animal on the planet. In fact, it is the largest animal that has ever lived on the face of the earth... by a long shot. Attaining lengths of 80-90 ft., weighing 150 to 200 tons, they dwarf any other animal that has ever lived. (The largest animal on land today is the African elephant which can attain a weight of about 6 tons... the tongue of the blue whale is heavier than an African elephant!) A blue whale has a heart the size of a small car and an aorta big enough for a person to crawl through. They grow so fast as calves that they can put on 200-300 lbs per day just feeding on its mothers milk. By the time they are weaned, at 9mos to a year, they are already over 50 ft. long - larger than most other whales. (It's hard to look at a 50 ft. long anything and think of it as an infant!
A baleen whale like the humpback, fin and Sei whales, the blue feeds almost exclusively on krill, small shrimp-like organisms that are especially abundant in the Santa Barbara Channel, particularly along the northern edge of the Channel Islands. A single blue whale requires as much as 4 tons of krill per day to sustain their incredible bulk, so feeding is pretty much an all day and all night affair. Blues are frequently seen feeding in the same krill patches as humpback and fin whales. In fact, during the peak of the whale feeding season in the Santa Barbara Channel, it is not unusual to see 5 or 6 different species of cetaceans (whales and dolphins) all in the same area at the same time.
This channel is generally considered to hold the highest concentration of blue whales in the world during the months from June through August... at times as many as 100 blues along a 30 mile by 5 mile stretch. They are very fast animals, capable of 25 knots, and can move hundreds of miles to another feeding area in a very short time. Individual animals will often move from the Santa Barbara Channel to Monterey Bay and back in a matter of weeks. This speed was responsible for very few blues being taken by whalers during the days of sailing ships... they just couldn't catch them. With the advent of steam powered catcher ships, however, and the exploding harpoon head, the blues became prime targets. During the 20's and 30's as many as 30,000 blue whales were taken in some years, and within just a few decades, the original population of, perhaps, 300,000 animals were reduced to fewer than 10,000 (some estimates put the number at less than 5,000) today.
Sleek and sculpted, with an astonishing, almost neon blue color under water, the blue whale is one of the most beautiful animals in the ocean - and, in spite of their experience with man and whaling ships, are often surprisingly friendly around boats. It's not unusual to have "friendly approaches" where the animals will come to the CONDOR EXPRESS, sometimes directly underneath us, and check us out.
Blue whales are seen daily in the Santa Barbara Channel during the months of June - August, sometimes staying as late as November. The CONDOR EXPRESS runs daily trips during this time departing at 8am to visit with these beautiful critters and cruise along the coast of the Channel Islands on the way home. On weekends and holidays we also run again at 1:00pm returning at 5:30.Few people on Earth have ever experienced these magnificent whales! Join us for a trip of a lifetime.