[CINC] Condor Sat. Jan 17, 2009

Sun Jan 18 18:17:18 PST 2009

Very interesting report! I have something to add, I was on the beach at Arroyo Burro as the Condor was on the way back to the Harbor.  I had just seen a lone whale spouting and moving in a westerly direction.  It was a very tall spout, and seemed to be going the "wrong" way!  The Condor stopped, headed towards the whale, then turned fully around and left for the harbor.  I thought they might have seen the whale and identified it, but I guess not!
Marilyn Dannehower
Marilyn Dannehower
----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Kevin Bailey 
  To: RAIN LIST 
  Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2009 11:12 PM
  Subject: [CINC] Condor Sat. Jan 17, 2009

  18 + Gray Whales (1+2+6+4+ 2+2 + others in the distance)

  250 Common Dolphins (200 + 50)

  2 Dall's Porpoise

  4 Bottlenose Dolphins

  3 Blue Sharks

  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. 

  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 1st 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.

  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.

  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.

  Kevin Bailey

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