Dave Anderson recently shot what he calls some of the most amazing dolphin and whale footage in his more than two decades at sea.
The San Juan Capistrano resident, who runs Captain Dave’s Dolphin & Whale Watching Safari in Dana Point, used a flying drone to film thousands of stampeding dolphins just outside Dana Point Harbor. Then he filmed three gray whales cruising off San Clemente on their southern migration to the lagoons of Baja California. The footage provides a full view of the whales and their playful interactions just beneath the surface.
The images are part of a five-minute video Anderson put together that also includes a close-up of a humpback whale calf snuggling and playing with its mother off Maui in the Hawaiian Islands while another whale swims nearby.
“This is the most beautiful and compelling … video I have ever put together,” Anderson said. “I learned so much about these whales and dolphins that it feels like I have entered a new dimension. Drones are going to change how we view the animal world.”
Anderson operated the four-propeller drone from his small inflatable boat. It hovered over the animals until he redirected it.
He said filming the dolphin stampede was the most challenging part because it required him to keep up with them as he steered the drone and kept the boat on course.
The drone’s overhead view enabled him to catch interactions between the humpback whale and its calf that he couldn’t while watching from a boat.
“At first we were watching them from the water level and we could see they were near each other,” Anderson said. “Then we thought the mom had gone down deep. When we sent the drone over, we could see she was right there with the baby. We could watch their relationship without affecting them.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently issued guidelines advising private boaters and commercial whale-watching operations to keep at least 100 yards from the giant mammals. Aircraft must stay 1,000 feet above them. Recent reports of record numbers of gray whales migrating south has caused some watchers to get a little too close to marine life, NOAA says.
NOAA officials say regulations prohibiting harassment of marine mammals also apply to those operating drones, though spokesman Jim Milbury was uncertain whether the height restriction applies to them.
Ed Lyman, who oversees a NOAA team in Hawaii that disentangles whales from fishing lines, nets and debris, is considering using drones to help in his work. The flying craft would be used to determine the extent of the entanglement and any harm a whale may have suffered.
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