San Diego Wildlife Photographer Domenic Biagini hopped on a boat and set sail from Mission Bay over the weekend in search of a blue whale.
But when he got miles off the San Diego coast, he found much more than a blue whale - he found a pod of killer whales, swimming in the blue waters around 11:30 a.m. on Saturday.
"Just a positively magical experience being on the water with these beautiful animals," Biagini wrote on Facebook, describing the first time he had ever seen orcas in San Diego. He has seen orcas on one other occasion, but not in San Diego.
He used his drone to capture footage of the animals swimming off the coast. The pod crossed paths with a blue whale, he said, but no interactions took place.
Generally, Biagini said, the orcas like to ambush baby gray whales from below, but this time, there was no gray whale in sight.
Biagini followed the six killer whales for a while but left them 25 miles southwest of Mission Bay to continue on their journey.
Biagini has no real explanation as to why the pod of orcas was off the San Diego coast but says it was a magical experience regardless.
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"A day I'll never forget," he wrote.
