[CINC] Condor 10-15-11

[garydel at aol.com]

Just the facts...

6 Humpbacks
1 Minke
3000 Commons
Lots of birds

Mat, Dave and Denis crewed today and took the Condor to the east. In what seems to be a reliable spot to see things, north of the east end of SCI, the first pod of commons was sighted with a couple of Humps further to the south. Soon thereafter the Condor was in the midst of a general feeding frenzy involving pelicans, cormorants, gulls, shearwaters, sea lions, commons and two humpbacks that became four and then five. Oh yeah... there were also zillions of anchovies involved on the losing end of this frenzy! This is when the Minke appeared too. Two of the humps were mother and calf. The Condor stayed for this amazing show for a while and then set out to find Risso's, apparently reported by another boat. But, alas, no Risso's were to be seen. Instead, the sixth Humpy appeared, traveling slow near the surface in a westerly direction. Water conditions were so flat and smooth that it was possible to "track" this whale as it produced its "footprints"! 

About 40 people from the UK, Ohio, Idaho, Minnesota and an alumni group from UCSB were on board. Barry Enticknap and I served as volunteers and I got of few decent PID shots too!

Gary Delanoeye
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.rain.org/pipermail/channel_islands_naturalist_corps/attachments/20111015/387d09f2/attachment-0001.html>