Latest news with #JessicaRodriguez
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Whale watching tour off Newport Beach gets rare visit from ‘phantoms' of the Pacific
A whale-watching excursion off the coast of Orange County got an up-and-close visit by a pair of friendly and 'extremely curious' minke whales. The encounter happened Tuesday morning between the whales and a Davey's Locker Whale Watching tour just miles off the Newport Beach coastline. Video shared with KTLA showed the normally shy and flighty marine mammals approach the packed boat, circling it several times and surfacing several feet away. According to Jessica Rodriguez, the Education & Communications Manager at Davey's Locker Whale Watching, encounters like this are exceedingly rare. 'Typically shy and swift, Minke whales are often known as the 'phantoms' of the Pacific due to their brief surface time and quick movements,' Rodriguez said. 'This encounter was a heartwarming reminder of the deep connection that can occur between humans and marine life when we take the time to observe, respect, and protect our ocean environment.' Among the passengers to be treated to the rare display of interspecies diplomacy, was a group of students from the local Monte Vista Elementary School. For more information about tours like this, click here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Miami Herald
23-03-2025
- Science
- Miami Herald
‘Gentle giant' rarely seen in Southern California waters stuns boaters. See video
A whale-watching tour off Southern California got a close-up look at a passing basking shark, which are rarely seen in warmer waters, a video shows. A Davey's Locker Whale Watching boat spotted the shark about 3 miles offshore between the Balboa and Newport Landing piers on Friday, March 21, an Instagram post said. 'Crossing paths with a basking shark in Southern California is very rare, but a couple have been reported by boats near Long Beach and San Diego recently,' the post said. 'We are overjoyed to have seen this special shark today.' 'Oh my gosh, he's filter-feeding!' someone says on the video. 'This is absolutely nuts, you guys,' the person says in footage obtained by KTLA. The crew initially mistook the shark for an elephant seal, KTLA reported. 'Basking sharks are the second largest sharks in the world, measuring up to 30 feet as adults, about as long as a school bus,' according to the National Marine Sanctuaries website. 'Like whale sharks and unlike white sharks, these gentle giants filter feed on dense clumps of copepods, tiny crustaceans about the size of a grain of rice,' the agency said. Sometimes mistaken for predatory sharks, basking sharks spend most of their time feeding near the surface, Oceana said. They are '/considered vulnerable to extinction.' 'These gentle giants are typically found in cooler waters, and are rarely spotted in waters off California, raising curiosity about why they were off the coast today in Newport Beach,' Jessica Rodriguez with Davey's Locker Whale Watching told KTLA.
