For the 52nd year, the annual Festival of Whales’ Magical Migration Parade thrilled crowds on Saturday in Dana Point.
The festival, started by Don Hansen, who is credited with introducing whale watching in Orange County, celebrates the annual gray whale migration.
While the parade is always a big draw, the festival features a weekend full of activities, which continue Sunday.
There have been cardboard boat races at Baby Beach and marine mammal lectures at Harpoon Harry Restaurant. On Sunday, there are kids fishing and stand-up paddle clinics and a hugely popular finale concert. At noon, famed San Clemente sand sculptor Jay Bellamy, with help from Dana Point High students, will build a whale sculpture at Baby Beach, the site of the concert.
Each year, gray whales pass Dana Point as they travel from Alaska’s Bering Sea to the warm lagoons of Baja, Mexico. This season, the first whale was spotted heading south on Dec. 9. On Valentine’s Day, boat captains reported seeing the first gray whale on its journey back to Alaska.
During this migration season, whale watch charters have seen all kinds of amazing whale antics and behaviors. One of the biggest highlights was the birth of a baby gray on Jan. 5, just outside Dana Point Harbor. Boat captains and passengers captured the amazing event on drones and cell phones. Since then, charter passengers have seen other mother whales with their calves swim by the Dana Point Headland, the large outcropping that experts believe whales use as a navigational point on their way up and down the coast.
Whales have been seen breaching, courting and spy hopping – holding itself vertically out of the water. But, the gray whales are not the only entertainment off Dana Point. There has been a host of dolphin stampedes, often with hundreds of animals, and even a humpback whale that showed up on Feb. 27. Some of the area’s faves have also been spotted such as Blanco, a pure-white Risso’s dolphin, and Patches, a bottlenose…
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