Trip Reports

Hello all,

We departed last night for the beginning of our 2020 Baja California Whalewatching season and are excited to be back abaord! We were grateful to have a calm ocean all night and all day today. Islas Todos Santos were green with new growth, and there were northern elephant seal females with pups along with a single male. We also spotted some harbor seals and a few sea lions.

We are enjoying lots of southbound gray whales, plenty of long-beaked common dophin, and a single humpback whale who was breaching. For the birds, we watched black-vented shearwaters, northern fulmar and two Layson albatrosses at the end of the day. A great first day in Baja! We’ll be arriving at Isla San Benitos just after daylight.

Capt Art and Team Searcher

Southbound gray whales spouting

Common dolphins

Dolphins on the bow!

Our 2020 tour season is off and watching whales in Baja! Departure day saw people arriving from UK, New Zealand, Australia, California and Indiana, to name a few. A couple of surprise visitors came aboard to gift us with a brand new book for our library–Mark Carwardine’s Handbook of Whales, Dolphins and Porpoise–the author and Rachel!

Mark signs our book.

New book for library!

Enjoying sunny San Diego before departure

Hello all,

We’ve had another tremendous day offshore.We started 15 miles west of the Cotez Bank area and had multiple sightings of Cook’s petrels (photo from a previous trip), albatross, shearwaters and storm petrels, and a single red-billed tropicbird, all before 9 am!  We traveled out along the drop off on the southern edge of the Cortez Bank, and then decided to head southeast towards the 60-mile bank with hopes of seeing Guadalupe murrelets. We were not disappointed. We came across a pair on the water close to the Cortez. Everyone had a great look and we celebrated finding this rare bird in this area. That made for many “life birds” to go around for the group.

We ended the trip anchored on the 60-mile bank while Dave Povey used the last of the fish oil and parts and attracted 8 black-footed albatross. We all agree it was a very successful pelagic birding trip and great job by the leaders!

Arriving in San Diego tomorrow morning.

Capt Art and Team Searcher

Hello all,

We’ve enjoyed a tremendous day offshore in deep water today! We left San Miguel Island after breakfast and it didn’t take long for three black-footed albatross to join us and stay for a while. Then loads of sooty and pink-footed shearwaters arrived, followed by Buller’s shearwaters. We had albatross behind the boat for almost the entire day.

We saw a few lue whales but were mostly able to just view their blows due to windy conditions. The storm petrel watching was really good. Leader Dave Povey kept a fish oil slick behind the boat all day, so we attracted loads of them. The highlight was a Townsend’s storm petrel which is a bird that one customer needed to make his list an even 700 species in the U.S. Quite an accomplishment!

Leach’s, Wilson’s, black and ashy storm petrels were added to the list of storm petrels. We encountered a few more blue whales and then we arrived on the San Juan Seamount. This is  is a shallow that comes up to 1800 feet of water out of 12,000 feet depth. It can be a very productive spot located 190 miles west of San Diego.

The San Juan Seamount did not disappoint–we had our first look at a Cook’s petrel. This a bird we all hope to see on this trip. We saw multiple Cook’s in the area along with Bullers, sooty and pink-footed shearwaters. Albatross found us as well. We were treated with a red-billed tropicbird and then at the end of the day, a Nazca booby flew right over the boat.

We are looking forward to tomorrow!

Capt Art and Team Searcher

Albatross off stern

Flying albatross

Checking for photos of Cook’s petrel

Nazca booby

Hello all,

We started our day at Santa Barbara with some poor conditions for visibility. We had some heavy fog so it was difficult to get a look at the booby colony. There were some in flight and we got a brief sighting of a Nazca booby, but not quite what we had hoped for. Eventually the fog cleared as we travelled west on a temperature break and enjoyed periods of good visibility.

Pink-footed shearwater photo from a previous trip @ Todd McGrath

We saw more sooty and pink-footed shearwaters, jaegers and Sabine’s gulls, a couple of large flocks of ashy storm petrels and a few black storm petrels mixed in. We came across six minke whales (click for more details and photos) and in the afternoon we saw two orcas: one female and one large male with a tall dorsal fin. They had just fed on something which produced a large slick on the surface and there was lots of birds there including gulls, shearwaters, jaegers and storm petrels. It was exciting for awhile! We are headed northwest to San Miguel Island for the night and headed offshore in deep water for tomorrow.

Capt Art and Team Searcher

Hello birders,

We departed on our annual pelagic bird watching trip today, Labor Day Monday. We started by heading west to the 30-mile Bank and then up the ridge to the northwest. We spotted large numbers of black-vented and pink-footed shearwaters, with a few sooty shearwaters mixed in. Also had good looks at Craveri’s murrelets close to the boat in calm conditions. There were a few jaegers, phalaropes, and storm petrels throughout the day as well.

Craveris murrelet @ McGrath, taken on a previous Searcher pelagic

For the marine mammals, we had a great look at a Bryde’s whale close to the boat and a small group of 100 common dolphins. Then a quick look at a sunfish too.

We were lucky to have calm conditions all day. We are headed west to Santa Barbara Island for a look at boobies in the morning.

Capt Art and Team Searcher

Sunday, September 1

Many birders arrived to town early enough to attend the pre-trip presentation, offered by leader Todd McGrath, on the variety of species we expect to find..fingers crossed for a rarity. Tour begins on Monday!

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Hello whalewatchers,
Our final day of the 2019 natural history tour season was tremendous! We enjoyed great ocean conditions with light winds, calm seas and sunny skies. We had terrific humpback whalewatching, with several humpbacks in the Gorda Banks area. There were trios, cows with calves, and groups of five whales. Since the sea was also very clear, we had excellent views of these humpback whalewatching. They were showing all the behaviors too, like fluking and leaping, which is always great for photography. We also saw a large group of bottlenose dolphin.
We travelled north east to Bahia Los Frailes and the group went ashore for a beach walk and birdwatching. After the walk there was a snorkel session in warm clean water and lots of reef fishes. Everyone enjoyed the afternoon activities.
We ended the day with a lovely sunset, margaritas and a back deck buffet with BBQ ribs, coleslaw, cornbread, mac and cheese, and banana bread.
It was another successful trip with happy clients and great whalewatching.

The entire 2019 season was great, and as usual, it went by very quickly. The sightings throughout the season were tremendous, as were our wonderful passengers. Thank you for joining us on your Baja adventure! Stay tuned to 2020.

Capt Art and Team Searcher