[CINC] WW Condor, 17 April, '13

[Kenneth A. Tatro]

Hi Folks,

3 Grays, with a set of a cow/calf pair, and later a lone juvenile.
15 Bottle Nose Dolphin, AM with calves.

It was a very nice day, especially considering Tuesday, when the entire Channel was in full on sea action and every one stayed in port.

The 9 AM was smooth, and Valerie gave her fine presentation with good questions from the folks. It only took us shy of Henry's Beach to score our first whale of the day, and this was the Cow/Calf pair hanging in there with Mom, quite closely. They were steady, yet with some zig zagging, heading west (north bound), a bit outside of the kelp beds. Folks were delighted to see the pair, especially with the calf.

After a good bit following them, they finally dove deep and were gone.

Yet is was not long before we saw our first pod of Bottle Nose, 5 in all with two calves. They did the usual thing of coming over to the boat  and playing with the boat's pressure wave and generally scoping us out.  Another delight for the folks and cameras were humming.

The noon trip was a bit more breezy, but still not bad at all. With the little more chop it took a fair amount of time before we discovered a lone juvenile Gray, with a very large amount of barnacles and sea lice all around it blow hole. That made for some very easy tracking as that showed a nice sea blue as it cruised just under the surface between blows. Again, just outside of the kelp line, it was in solid cruise mode, moving very steadily west, just under the surface between blows. We tracked it all the way to Goleta. Folks got some very nice looks and again the cameras were clicking off in unison.

It was on the way back that we encountered the second pod of Bottle Nose, so both trips got a nice viewing of both species in action and in the wild.

We had a young school group from Ventura as well as folks from England, Belgium, Germany, China, New York, Denver, Boston, and several locals out enjoying these two nice trips into the Channel.

The late afternoon trip was canceled.

Thanks to Captain Dave for skippering the Condor to his usual fine skills and narration. Captain Scott, and Engineer, Mike filled in the crew duties just fine. Both trips came off without a hitch.

Valery Olson joined me on the AM trip, as she had relatives on board and wanted to be there with them. Ginny Fischer, who was kind enough to trade with Valerie for the AM, joined me on the Noon run. I think it was the first time I have had the privilege of doing a WW run with either of these veteran Naturalist, we teamed well on both runs.  Hope we can do it again not too far away.



Ken Tatro