[CINC] Islander whale watch 9/1/2010

[Anthony Lombardi]

The morning fog was upon us yesterday as we headed out into the gray with a 
small group of passengers with a lot of room.   We had not been hearing that the 
whales were still around, so as Jacob and myself headed out we didn't have much 
of an idea as to what we would be in store for.  The fog was continous as we 
headed to the feeding grounds just north of Santa Rosa,  we had been talking to 
Mat already on the Condor and he was closing in on the area as well.  We hear 
one of the passengers call out that he had seen something in the fog,  we pull 
back and circle in the direction of his sighting,  as we looked into the gray, 
 we get a glimpse of a humpback.  This was a great start to our day with our 
whales in the mist,  this whale repeatedly lunge fed everytime it surfaced,  the 
krill was so thick that is was visible on the surface and you could see the 
phalaropes catching some as the krill jumped on the surface.   We then started 
hearing spouts all around us, but couldn't see anything,  we slowly moved into 
the direction of the spouts and had many pairs of humpbacks,  blues and fin 
whales all lungefeeding on the surface,  at one point every whale was up on a 
lunge feed at the same time.   There was a fin and a blue that stayed together 
the whole time, lunge feeding in unison.  The fog was slowly lifting and all the 
spouts that we were hearing started becoming these visual beings,  we had been 
whale listening for so long,   the whales were everywhere.  It was quite a site, 
 the whales have moved back into the channel! Hopefully they will stay a little 
longer.  There has been signs in the water that the nutrients and baitfish were 
making one more push into the area, with recent sightings of pelagic fish again 
around the islands and large amounts of early season bait fish in large masses 
around the islands, and something has to feed the baitfish and that also feeds 
the krill.  Hope the fog lifts again out there to see the true numbers.
Anthony
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.rain.org/pipermail/channel_islands_naturalist_corps/attachments/20100902/31323286/attachment.html>