Encounter 11 - April 15, 2021
On Thursday, April 15th, we headed north and spent time with what appeared to be two groups of whales that stayed fairly close to each other, while intermittently dispersing and mixing: the CA39s, (including CA39, CA39C, CA39C1, a young calf who is most likely CA39C2, and CA39D), as well as CA26, CA36, CA35, and CA35A.
CA26 (first seen in 1982) and CA36 (first seen in 1992) have been seen together in recent years, and are infrequently encountered. They are two of the older females that we call "The Golden Girls", seen together on 12 Sept 2019! They were with CA35 and CA35A, who were also present in our last sighting of all four of these whales on December 11, 2020!
They were hard to keep up with as they were traveling fairly quickly in windy conditions. We were thrilled to spend time with these whales: a very special sighting!