For the best play-by-play of a phenomenon unfolding off the coast of Pacifica right now, look no further than Robin Brun.

"I do love it, as you can tell," she said. "A lot of the time, you can see them slap their fins."

Simply put? Brun loves whales.

"They're magnificent creatures for sure," she said.

She is talking about the humpback whale, the star of an offshore show on daily display in her backyard that is drawing people to Pacifica from all over the place.

"There's definitely a number of us whale addicts out here. We could spend hours and hours and hours. All day out here, at times," she said. "The last two weeks have been spectacular."

The whales are here primarily to feed on anchovies. It's a relatively new phenomenon.

"We are seeing now whales using coastal habitats more often than they did 20, 15 years ago," said Jaime Jahncke, with the Point Blue Conservation Science. "There are two things going on here. One is a shift in distribution of the prey, the fish, that they consume. The second part? The success story of the recovery of the humpback whale population along the west coast of the US."

Jahncke said the whales are staying for longer durations now, too.

"Their time in this area used to be shorter, July to October. They are spending more time in the area. We published a paper a few years back where we documented that they now stay from about April to December," he said. "But in the last couple of years, we've had humpback whales stay here even during the winter. So, they are almost year-round residents of our area."

While the phenomenon is exciting to witness, Jahncke said there are steps humans need to take to protect the whale population.

"We need to do as much as we can to minimize the threat from vessel strikes and from entanglements," he said.

Brun loves sharing her enthusiasm with others.

"I would say, it's just kind of like pure joy to see them," she said.

She created a Facebook group called Pacifica Whalespotting a few years ago, so people could take in the beauty together. There are now 35,000 members in the group.

"I've gotten messages from people who've said it's completely changed their life to see whales for the first time," she said.

It's tough to pinpoint what it is.

"For some reason, I'm just drawn to them. I love to watch them," she said. "I don't know what draws me to them, because it's not like I like to swim in the ocean, but I do like to see the whales."

Maybe it's a majestic magnetism. Or maybe, it's the mysteriousness of what lies below the marine surface. But whatever it is, Brun is in luck, with the performance taking place in her backyard.