Surprising close encounters with marine predators in California bring awe and fear

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Set us as preferred A visit from Baja orcas in Southern California and a kayaker’s close encounter with a great white shark in the San Francisco Bay Area highlighted a weekend of unexpected visitors along California’s shoreline.Personnel and guests with Dana Point-based Capt.Dave’s Whale Watching Safari recorded a rare sighting of 13 Eastern Tropical Pacific orcas off Laguna Beach on Saturday.“On a good year, we expect to see maybe one such orca,” said Capt.

Matt Stumpf, who has sailed with Capt.Dave’s since 2020.

“We may get one day where one or two trips get to see it, but that’s again one day in a good and typical year.”Social media footage showed the whales traveling in a pod and within feet of a few boats, leaving guests awed.Stumpf said the aquatic mammals were tracked throughout the day and first spotted by boats off the coast of Newport Beach.The sighting was at least the third for the company over the last three weeks, he said, fueling speculation as to what the whales, normally found off Baja and farther south, are doing so far north.“I couldn’t tell you exactly the cause,” Stumpf said.

But “our water is so warm much later than it usually is” as a result of El Niño.Science & Medicine Weather conditions have stymied efforts to help the animal, which was last seen Thursday.Normally, he said, the maximum ocean water temperature in the area would range from the mid-50s to the mid-60s at this time of year, and visiting whales are usually the type that can handle colder temperatures.But October has not brought a cooldown, he said.

“The temperature off San Clemente Island is over 70 ...That’s tropical.”As the Orange County whale watchers were enjoying their unusual brush with warm-water orcas, a kayaker to the north had a brush with a great white shark.Bay Area resident David Slavich told a local television station that he was kayaking off Half Moon Bay on Sunday wh...