Blue whales off the California coast! Six of them!

WoW!

Scale:

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My oceanography profs ar Scripps were worried about them in the sixties and early seventies because the worldwide population density had dropped so low they were concerned the whales would find it impossible to meet each other for mating.

Then, Navy hydrophone networks used to monitor Soviet submarines were declassified and records revealed the whales could and were communicating from ocean basins spanning the entire southern oceans. Signaling between the South Atlantic and South Pacific, around the South American continent! The whales were exploiting density gradient sound channels and their ability to generate very specific frequencies to communicate over incredible distances.
For something that large the world ocean is all their own neighborhood.

And so, once whale killing pressure was removed, they’ve bounced back.

One of my cooler wildlfie observations was at Point Reyes where we saw elk in the foreground and whales in the background at the same time.