Encountering wildlife while surfing

[oldmansurfer]

I am not sure why they were cautiously optimistic other than it was still alive after 2 days. Single whales only strand when they are severely compromised and usually nearly dead. A baby maybe lost it's mom and is slowly starving to death. Here is a picture of the one I saw. I have attended quite a few strandings usually they are dead by the time I get there or they die shortly after. If we tow them back into the water it is generally just a convenience so the body doesn't need to be disposed of unless it comes back on shore again.

[oldmansurfer]

Here is another one I saw it was an orca


and this was a sperm whale

[oldmansurfer]

here is a melon headed whale

a pilot whale

a false killer whale

[Maya8898]

I'm probably a little late for this, but today i went SUPing and i saw a 6 ft (approx.) shark and where i live (a place in mexico that you probably don't know it exists) you don't usually see sharks; actually it is so strange to see a shark that i thought i was hallucinating until someone told me there was a shark.

[dtc]

Huh, a shark where you dont expect it is probably scarier than seeing a shark when you know they are around. At least then you think 'oh, it just lives here'; if its not meant to be there you are thinking 'its looking for something to eat'

Are you on the east or west coast?

[Maya8898]

Huh, a shark where you dont expect it is probably scarier than seeing a shark when you know they are around. At least then you think 'oh, it just lives here'; if its not meant to be there you are thinking 'its looking for something to eat'

Are you on the east or west coast?

gulf

[dtc]

Was surfing the other day and a pod of dolphins started swimming down the beach, quite slowly. I saw them about 100m away so no problem, and was intently watching one that was surfacing about 5m in front of me when I heard this almighty 'whooooosh' right behind me. Scared the life out of me - spun around another dolphin had surfaced maybe 1m from my board and had exhaled out of its blow hole virtually in my ear. Bloody loud.

As the waves were completely closing out the entire time, that was the highlight of the surf.

[oldmansurfer]

I had a turtle pop up 10 yards from me yesterday. Not too unusual. I forgot to mention I saw a turtle 10 feet from me last weekend but it wasn't as friendly. It pooped upwind from me, You could see the nasty darkeness in the water and the overwhelming smell of rotten seaweed. I took that as time to catch a wave in.

[jaffa1949]

I had just had a nice surf, came in and noticed a mother southern right whale and calf approaching the break where I had been surfing.
I believe it is the same mother who comes to a nearby beach to calve.
The calf was using mum as a slippery slide and there were behaviours that look very like whalish hugs.
So I shot them again and again for over an hour.
One shows how close they got to the surfers and the other a whale tail hug!

I didn't know there was a reef there!

Whale tail hug

[Naeco78]

Lots of these sightings around the local breaks recently. Pretty incredible for this area