[CINC] Sunday, June 29 Condor Express Excursion

[Christopher Carlson]

Greetings space cadets,

Naturalist Chris Carlson here to tell you about our journey on CX today. And
of course, another long email to boot!

Sightings:
~700-1000 Common Dolphins
~50 Pacific White-sided Dolphins

Quite a lot of cloud cover this morning aboard the Condor. One 10-2:30 trip
was planned by Captain Matt and the rest of the crew. There were an
estimated 50 or so passengers with us. About half had never been whale
watching before. We had just a handful of people from Santa Barbara, and
more from elsewhere, like Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arkansas, North
Dakota, Switzerland, Poland, and Norway! Well, okay, the Norway guy actually
lives in SB now. Still. He was trying to convince me to go there sometimes
too. That'd be pretty cool! He says the water is warmer than it is here!
Amazing! And the Portuguese guy was telling me about islands you can go to
off Portugal where you can see sperm whales all around you. Man, Europe gets
to have ALL the fun! Well, I guess we have our share of marine stuff too...
:-P

It was pretty cool out there until around 12:30 or so when the sun came up.
We had about four separate encounters with Common Dolphins. The third
encounter had about 500 or so in a pretty good sized megapod that people
seemed to enjoy a good amount. The fourth encounter was my favorite though,
because man do those dolphins like to jump! This one dolphin did the most
amazing jump I've ever seen outside of SeaWorld and the Discovery Channel,
jumping clear out of the water, turning his belly to us, and diving
gracefully! He probably could've jumped over me, no problem! It was amazing,
and I gave a very loud cheer that got me a few stares. It was worth it.
Pacific White-sided Dolphins were also spotted, and those guys had some hops
in them too. A few really enjoyed their color.

No larger cetaceans than that were spotted the whole day though. We traveled
west along the coast, eventually hitting Point Conception with its
lighthouse, with hopes that the whales had moved up the coast. We couldn't
find any though. Some were particularly disappointed, particularly the
Michigan girl who was heading back on Wednesday. I tried to cheer her and a
few others up with my frequently used line "But dolphins are KINDS of
whales!" referring to their dual cetacean lineage. That gives a slight smile
from some. But it's true! Tell it to Carl Linnaeus (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Linnaeus) if you're still disappointed!

A lot of the trip most of the passengers stayed put in the toasty cabin
until the Capt told them to check out some Common Dolphins. But some enjoyed
the bow with their cameras (there was one guy from Marine Bio Photography
with us on the voyage, check them out at
http://www.marinebiophotography.com). One kid stayed at the back of
the boat most of the trip playing Pokemon
on his Nintendo DS system. If you don't know, Pokemon is a game involving
training fictional animals to travel with you. Come on kid, focus on the
REAL animals! But, as a former player, I had a chat with him about some of
the basics. Ah, memories... And I definitely have to mention this older lady
on board, who made it very clear that she has two artificial knees and that
it is difficult for her to walk. She was so sweet. She took a seat by all of
the humpback setup stuff, and kept the humpback whale figure in her lap the
entire trip. The. Entire. Trip. She wanted to protect it from falling off,
and frequently reminded me that "my baby" was safe with her. She had such a
good time too.

A good amount of disappointed faces left the boat, sadly, but a lot had wide
smiles. Any day on the ocean is a good one, right? I think so at least.

Oh by the way, the Los Angeles Times posted an article in their travel
section last Sunday (June 22) about the Channel Islands National Park. I
brought the article with me and showed it to about a half-dozen passengers.
It's really an expansive piece so definitely check it out:
http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-tr-channel22-2008jun22?gp=santa-barbara&parent=channel-islands-national-park&type=destinations
The copy I brought got pretty beat up from the boat ride so I'm considering
ordering it and laminating a copy. But if you've actually read this far into
my email, TOTALLY check out that article!

Anyways, another day, another dolphin. Glad I'm along for all the rides.

Chris Carlson
chrisjamescarlson at gmail.com
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