SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – The North Pacific right whale is one of the rarest whales in the world, and Monterey Bay whale watchers caught an even rarer glimpse of one this weekend.
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A group of whale watchers went out on Sunday morning to see what they could spot, and pretty quickly, they were rewarded.
"It was a pretty fast one," said Captain Pualani Dalton with the Monterey Bay Whale Watch, who was the first to spot the whale.
Sometimes it can take up to an hour to spot the first whales of the day when passengers go out with the group.
This time, it only took about 25 minutes after the boat left the harbor at around 9 a.m.
Dalton's boat was going down south by the coastline hoping to see some gray whales, since it’s gray whale season, when she saw the breach.
"I saw this massive dark-looking whale just come up out of the water – about three-quarters of the body came up and sent a big splash on the way down," she said.
"Our first thought was that it was a humpback whale," she said. In Monterey, if a whale is rising that far above the water, it's usually a humpback.
The boat turned in that direction to investigate.
It didn't long for Dalton and another nearby vessel to figure out that what they were seeing was special.
"This particular whale is rare enough that the last time anyone had thought they'd spotted it in Monterey may have been about 20 years ago," said Dalton.
There was one sighting last year in Half Moon Bay of the North Pacific right whale.
"When that whale came back up and it was rolled over on its side and flapping its side flippers, and the shape was completely wrong for a humpback, it was wrong for a gray whale," she said.
Fortunately, photographers were on board and were able to snap a few good shots of the acrobatic whale.
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