[CINC] Corrections on Rock and Roll Condor X 5/14

[Kenneth A. Tatro]

Thanks, Bob, for this, good info to take in. It's a good and timely topic.

We had a researcher speak to us recently, sorry I cannot remember her name, but she is a professor out of UC Riverside, I believe, and Gray whales is her specialty. If I remember correctly, she did said that opportunistic feeding by Gray whales is happening now, not often, but with some kind of, likely irregular, frequency, even of fish, rather than of the critters of the bottoms, which is their primary and usual choice of feeding.

Then we had the juvenile Gray hang out at the entrance of Santa Barbara Harbor, for about three weeks, and over a couple of years. Some observations were, that this one was feeding at the harbor entrance, before it went on its way. 

The ice melt in the Arctic, we know, is upsetting the gestation cycle for some of the females causing them to calve off of Oregon, northern California and we even had a report, I think it was last year, of a Gray calving here in the SB Channel witnessed by one of our CINC folks on a public WW. Educated gestimations for this is that the Grays are having to go further north to feed, making the trip back longer, so some Grays are calving too soon, and thus opportunistic feeding is now occurring more and more for some of the others.

This whole oceanographic study, we are all a part of, is still very new, ... what, some 50-60 years along now, so our knowledge base is still filling in with many very wide open spots still to be taken up to observe, much more so, to fill in.

So, my sense is we are still learning, and what we have so, in relation to the whole, far is still very limited. I am not sure all of the info we have is all that firm, yet.

Comments welcome, as we all can learn from each other.

Ken Tatro

On May 16, 2012, at 9:42 AM, Mr Zalophus wrote:

> Colleagues,
>  
> Sorry to add to an already lengthy discourse.  But as Dr. John Heynig once told me when I asked him point blank about reports of Gray Whales feeding outside the Alaskan grounds (at the ACS Conference on board the Queen Mary, before his death), he stated emphatically that Grays do not feed on their migration.  The general public often thinks wild animals do nothing but feed, and are motivated primarily by food. There may even be an odd individual that exhibits some wierd behavior, but the over arching fact remains that they feed exclusively in Alaskan waters.  I have had the privilege of hearing Capt Mat talk about Gray Whales for many years, and that is what he says...they fast during the migration.   When people see Grays pausing for a while along the migration route, they are not feeding.  Are they nursing, playing, mating, socializing, grooming, resting, studying the environment, orienting themselves?   or all of the above.
> Bob
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 7:31 AM, Michael Berg <michaelberg6 at gmail.com> wrote:
> My apologies for mistakes in my 5/14 report.
> I am a newbie naturalist also new at writing
> reports.  I appreciate comments from more
> experienced naturalists as I want reports
> I write to be accurrate.
> The gray whale activity I reported in my 5/14
> report looked like shallow feeding to me but
> Capt. Mat did not state that they were feeding.
> I also reported that Black Storm-petrels were
> observed. They looked like Storm-petrels to me
> and probably were Ashley Storm-petrels not
> Black Storm-petrels.
>  
> Michael
> michaelberg6 at gmail.com 
>  
> 
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