[CINC] IPCO 1/4/2008 - breaching and fluking gray whale

[Kevin Bailey]

2 Gray whales - 1 with breaching and lots of tail flukes

1 rescue at sea

1500 Commons on AM trip

500 Commons on PM trip

Our morning whale watch trip with Island Packers was quite rough and windy.
All the whales were hidden in the white choppy waves.  Both trips were out
to the AI / SCI pass and around the back side, looking at the arch, then
home. We saw 1500 commons on the AM trip and that was the highlight. It was
a very small crowd of less than 10 people. The most interesting part of the
AM trip was our rescue at sea. A distressed boater on a small 35' motor boat
was sending out distress calls but the real story is that the boat was just
fine; they were new boaters who were panic stricken with the rough seas.
Capt. Jimmy came to the rescue east of Scorpion Harbor and told them to
follow us to the buoy in Scorpion Harbor where it took Jimmy quite an effort
to get them to tie up their boat. Soon thereafter the Coast Guard arrived
and we continued our journey home.

For the afternoon trip, the wind died down dramatically and there were no
white caps all the way around Anacapa. When we turned around the backside of
AI we saw our 1st gray whale and then after 15 minutes of waiting, we never
saw it again. By then we had another whale come up from behind that checked
us out by breaching three times to see what was up ahead of it. It was quite
the show-off whale with breaching and several tail flukes.  I think it had a
bit of humpback blood. We watched this Gray whale for an hour and saw tail
flukes at least a dozen times. All of the 70 passengers were thrilled with
their New Year's outing.

Happy New Year.

Kevin and Toni Bailey

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