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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%'>18 + Gray
Whales (1+2+6+4+ 2+2 + others in the distance)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%'>250 Common
Dolphins (200 + 50)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%'>2 Dall’s
Porpoise<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%'>4 Bottlenose
Dolphins<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%'>3 Blue
Sharks<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%'>Today was
another perfect day on the water. Fellow naturalist Scott Cuzzo and I talked
with people from France, Holland, N. CA, LA area, CO, NE, and AZ. Capt
Mat, Dave and Dennis lead us on today’s adventure with guests Bernardo
and Diane Alps of LA ACS. This was a better than usual crowd with everyone
exciting all day to see what was in the channel. The awesome weather on shore
stayed with us the entire day and no one was sick so that makes it good
already. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%'>We saw our
first cetacean 10 minutes out of the harbor with about 200 Common Dolphins
scattered everywhere eating, jumping, porpoising and enjoying their morning
feeding session. We stayed with them a while since they were so active and then
continued toward the islands seeing 2 Dall’s porpoise for a quick glance.
These were not the ones that wanted to be seen or photographed. Most people
missed them and I only saw one quick black blip and that was it. On we go
toward the SCI-SRI gap where we saw our 1<sup>st</sup> solo Gray this side of
the island. This whale didn’t want to show us any action so with several
spouts toward the gap we continued on and came upon a pair that we watched for
a bit and then as we got closer to SCI we saw a couple good sized groups. Once
we were on scene, we had 6 whales to our immediate left, 4 whales to our
immediate right and stayed with these groups for a while with lots of fluking.
The group of 6 was very close to each other the whole time. We often saw
3-4 blows at the same time as 2-3 dives. We would see many combos of flukes and
spouts in a very small area. These whales were swimming along the island toward
Painted Cave so we followed them along the island. While watching this group we
could see many spouts behind us in the 1-2 mile range headed our way and/or
toward the gap.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%'>Although the
sea was calm all day there was quite a surge immediately against the island so
we barely made it into the shade of the cave and were not able to get a close
look at it today. All day there were large numbers of sea birds from the
gazillion pelicans that have been hanging out at the harbor to lots of auklets
skimming along the surface. A woman from NE was an avid birder and she
thoroughly enjoyed the day watching all the wildlife and loved the Peterson
Flash Guide for birds of the West Coast from the whale kit. I also gave her a
couple other good locations for tomorrow to see birds both on shore and at Lake
Cachuma. We continued home toward UCSB and saw a Blue Shark that quickly
disappeared but then 5 minutes late we saw 2 more, 1 of which allowed us to
observe its behavior for several minutes as it was slowly cruising at the
surface. We followed the coastline from just east of Goleta Beach back to the
to the harbor. Following the coast we saw 2 pairs of Bottlenose Dolphins in
their coastal positions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%'>Everyone on
board was extremely happy with the day and several people commented that they
were amazed at how much wildlife there was to see out here as well as the
beauty of the islands. A couple locals were even amazed and said that they had
never been out in the channel even though they had lived in SB for many years.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%'>Kevin Bailey<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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