[CINC] New Years Eve Day 12/31/2011 on Condor Express

[Kevin Bailey]

The sun disappeared after being nice for the last month (but back today
1/1/12)

 

Dense fog monster all day with 100-300  yards visibility for majority of the
day

 

10 Dall's porpoise  found us and stayed for a while bow riding - I have
never seen that; Michael Smith was on board  photographing his Gray friends
and said it was the best Dall's sighting he had seen; It was really a great
site and thrilled the crowd!

 

Later,  4 Risso's popped out of the fog - probably more in distance but we
saw 4

 

As I was talking to a passenger I saw a larger all gray dolphin jump
completely out of the water (almost directly over her head) and I think I
was the only one to see it! 

By process of elimination it must have been an offshore bottlenose. It
jumped quite high, only once, and never saw it or any others again but we
didn't stop.

 

We went way out west into the 120 zone to try and escape the fog but that
didn't work.

 

Late in the day we finally got whales - 2 Gray Whales just inside the north
entrance to the SCI / SRI gap

They were friendly grays and stayed closer to the boat than any other grays
I have seen. We saw many breathing cycles, lots of flukes and great looks.
For 1 breathing cycle the sun popped through and it was amazing to see the
sun spotlighting the flukes of the 2 whales as they descended.  We stayed a
while and left the gap late and got back close to 3:15pm but all of the
passengers were thrilled with the amazing sightings.

Cheers and Happy New Year!

 

Kevin Bailey (PID)

Toni Bailey

Eileen Avery

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