Beginning of the Weekend: Whales and SCUBA

I'm a little jealous I'm not out whale watching this weekend, since we seem to have hit the peak of the season and it's going to be fantastic. Yesterday I went out on both trips and we saw a ton of whales. Most days we see one whale, on lucky days we see two or three, maybe four. Yesterday we saw 11 on the first trip and 13 on the second. Or at least we thought we saw that many, it was hard to keep track. There were whales surfacing all around us, you could see blows in almost any direction you looked. Most were blue whales, but there were at least a few fin whales, and a blue-fin hybrid, which is very rare indeed. One of the fins engaged in some lunge feeding on the surface, and I got a great picture of it (to be uploaded later). It was a fantastic day for whale watching. And to top it off, the dolphins were gettin' it on in the harbor! Not a trip for the kids.

I'm not on the aquarium boats this weekend, though, because I'm doing a SCUBA certification class. We had our first classroom and pool session today and it's already incredible. I've had very vivid dreams where I can breathe underwater and this is exactly what it's like. Effortless breathing underwater. The swimming feels a little strange so far, though, just because I'm so used to being in a pool in a swimsuit, not a 7mm wetsuit and with 50lbs of gear strapped on my back. The skills aren't too hard, but there are a lot of things to remember. Our instructor is great -- she's nice, very clear, and teaches things well. There's only six of us in the class and everyone's been pretty chill so far.

Tomorrow we're going to Catalina to dive at some kelp forests, which I am really looking forward to. I'm going to Southeast Asia in a few weeks and I thought about getting certified while there, but I really wanted to see kelp forests and not waste time on my trip taking a class. Two birds, one stone. And now I'm thinking about far more seriously about taking time to go diving on my trip.

However, I need to leave at 5:30am tomorrow to be in San Pedro by 6:15am to get geared up and on the boat at 7am. Uuuuuugh.