Fort Ross 9/14 & Whoa thats one big dorsal fin

Capt. Matt, De Weasel, and myself had a great day at Fort Ross today.  Conditions were xlnt, and we trucked in the usual mixed bag of various rock fish, lings and cabs, but the most interesting thing that happened was when we were some distance outside the cove, and Capt. Matt says, "hey Lost Coast, what's that?"  I look up and I see this huge dorsal fin just cruising about 75 yards out from us.  We watched it just cruising for a good 3-4 minutes, and then lost sight of behind a swell and it never came back.  While we were watching it, it did not breach or submerge, it just cruised on the top.  Whadya think?

 

Growing up in Fort Bragg and diving off of Paddle Boards my Dad always told me those were Basking sharks. We saw them on a few occasions but I never got close enough to check his accuracy. So... For a little comfort, It was a Basking shark

awesome! way to be johnny on the photo op!

Yeah, nice to see a pic of the "guess what i saw report"  I'd never be able to get the camera up in time.

From the distance and the size I'd say it's not a GW just doesn't look right.

With the amount of food off the coast right now maybe we're getting some unusual visitors.

There are others here with more experience and knowledge than I, I'm sure we'll get some better input soon.

Very Cool sighting tho!!!!!

dale

trpndiver- good call, thanks.  Did some quick research and found:

Basking sharks are commonly mistaken for Great White mainly due to their similar size. However, there are quite differences between basking sharks and Great Whites. Most notably is the difference between a basking shark's fin and a great white's fin. The basking shark has a much more rugged and rounded fin, compared to the Great Whites sharp right-angle triangular fin. Basking sharks have a thicker less-pointed nose than great whites. Perhaps the biggest difference is the swimming motions, basking sharks are much slower through the water and use a side-to-side swimming action.

When we were watching it, it was moving slowly in a side to side motion, and we both noticed an commented about the fin being more rounded off as opposed to being angular.

Pretty cool, the second largest fish in the ocean; never seen one before!!!

THose are some creepy pictures, even if it is a basking shark...all that water with one fin in the middle of it, and god knows what beneath it. Very cool.

Cool report and followup.  Way to get the photos.   

Thanks for the photos. I'm amazed you stayed on the water to take the pics!

Definitely a shark fin, not curved like a dolphin or killer whale. after that, who knows? But it sure looks BIG!

great photos!

Well thats a sure fire way to add some spice to your outing. I can hear it now."Hey whats that!" "is it coming closer?" "What do you want to do" "It looks kinda big".

So..... did ya hear the tune? dun-dun, dun-dun-dun.....

I gotta tell ya, I'd be lyin if I were to say it didn't get a little sketchy out there for a minute when we saw that thing cruising by, but we figured WTF, everybody gotta die sometime.

Oh!!  But the one thing I forgot to tell you guys about was the walk back to the car.  Ya know at Fort Ross how they let ya drive down to the cove, so ya can load and unload but then you have to drive the pick-up back up to the parking lot to park.  Well after a long day of fishing, it was my turn to hike back up and get the truck, so I walked up the bluff, and around the Fort.  I was tired and it was the end of a long day, so I decided to take a short cut through the woods below the visitor center.  I was cutting through some pretty heavy brush when I heard this eery sound, and I smelled this horrible odor, kinda like a cross between Capt. Matt's feet and skunk, and then boom there it was right in front of me.  Luckily I had my camera ready:

Cool pics LCJ. Very hard to tell what it is at that distance. Heck, it could even have been a Mola Mola.



Very cool sighting and great job on hanging out and snapping a few.

Z

Basking shark.........mola mola...........bigfoot.........

"Denial (also called abnegation) is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence."

   Same thing happened about the same time last year. Rhino (Ryan G.) and I were out off the fort with lots of porpoise and then at one point I spotted one large dorsal fin that did not submerge  about fifty yards behind his kayak. Just minutes before we had decided to fish for thirty more minutes........after the "siting" we nervously called it a day.