[CINC] Condor Saturday 8/14/2010

[Kevin Bailey]

Today was an ACS charter trip to see Blue whales with Capt. Mat and Capt.
Dave.

There were no CINC Naturalists on duty today; we went as ACS members for fun
and saw lots of the regulars we see on the whale watching boats.

We woke up at 6am to the usual Santa Barbara fog but it was burned off by
the time we got out to the SRI / SMI area and was sunny most of our whale
watching day.

 

Alisa Schulman-Janiger (the Killer Whale Expert / Researcher) did a
fantastic job narrating the majority of the day.

We thought her presence would bring an awesome Orca sighting but other
amazing things were to be seen instead.

 

Also on board was Christina Tombach Wright who does research on the Western
Pacific Gray Whale population whose numbers are down to approximately 200.

She had a PID book she wrote that has several photos of each gray whale
(tail-top and bottom, body, dorsal area ) of this highly endangered group of
whales.

Bernardo and Diane Alps were there as the leaders of this ACS trip.

 

After reading yesterday's sightings report we had high expectations of being
surrounded by whales .

We saw about 700 Commons after 1  1/2 hours out of the harbor and then some
spouts in the distance.

There were 3 "official" Blue sightings (within reasonable distance of the
boat) with a total number of 7.

 

The highlight was the 12 Humpbacks of which the super highlight was one
Humpback that breached 6 times completely out of the water and lunged / head
lobbed / chin slapped or some kind of head move an additional 4 times.

I had to count the sequences of my photos to see what we actually saw.
He/she was very entertaining.

We also saw lunging feeding a couple times where the humpback came straight
up out of the water, mouth wide open, giving us great views (and photo opts)
of the baleen and tubercles on the head. 

 

We also had quick dashes of 2 groups of Dahl's totaling maybe 8-10 animals. 

 

One interesting note on sea lions, which were seen throughout the day or
more specifically one sea lion.  We did see a large group porpoising like
they were being chanced by Orcas but again no Orcas were to be seen.

One sea lion had a very large branding on it with the number 3150. No one
knew for sure what it could be but there was speculation that is was/is some
part of a research project. I wondered if it was a Navy Sea Lion that went
AWOL?

If anyone has heard of sea lion branding or knows more details it would be
interesting to hear what the story is with Sea Lion #3150. It did look
healthy and well fed, and there was nothing strapped to it!

 

Then, almost home,  just off Hope Ranch we saw another group of 300 Common
Dolphins .

 

Another awesome day on the water.

 

Kevin and Toni Bailey

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