Lots of Wild Life around Santa Cruz Island

[Mystaadam]

Went out with some friends for some diving and fishing over at Santa Cruz island yesterday, and we had a fair amount of unexpected sea life encounters. While diving somewhat near Yellow Banks, in about 30 feet of water we saw an unexpected sight. At first, I was a bit perplexed because there was a very large fish above me (not sure how he slipped by me). While initially startled, that energy turned into excitement when I realized it was a Sunfish! I started to track him when I noticed about 10 feet to my left there was a second one! While i've heard of them in our waters, it was my first experience coming across them. No other unusual suspects were seen (just your usual mix of Garabaldis, Calico's and nudibranch) but that sighting was well worth it.

After some fishing, we made our way back to Ventura Harbor in the afternoon. Right around the oil rig closest to shore (I'm not too familiar with each rigs name) we came across a large whale that none of us could identify. We only saw it for maybe a total of 10 seconds but it had a pretty good size tail. It clearly dove deep because we waited around for almost 10 minutes without seeing it come back up. Interestingly, this morning Island Packers posted that there was a Sperm Whale sighted in the channel yesterday around the same time we saw it. They had a few pics of the tail on their Instagram page that looked considerably like the whale we spotted.

You never know what you'll find in our local ocean.