[CINC] CX 09-07-09 Report

[Christopher Carlson]

Good evening sportsfans,

Just the facts ma'am:
-1 Blue Whale
-1 Minke Whale
-Thousands of Delphinus

Today Scott Cuzzo, Alexa Mutti, and I (Chris Carlson) went aboard Captain
Mat's whale watching trek. A little over 100 from Ireland, England, Germany,
Japan, and good ol' fashioned California joined us. It was a hot day but not
too windy which was a nice break. We spotted a lone blue whale around 11:00
quite a ways north of Santa Cruz Island which was unusual but a real treat.
The folks got a real good look at him, which was excellent. We spotted two
separate large common dolphin pods, right off of western Santa Cruz and a
smaller one on the way home, and everyone got a real kick out of their total
belly flops as they sailed clear out of the water. On the way back, we got
an absolutely excellent look at a minke whale, which was impressive as I had
never seen one before for longer than five seconds. On the not as great side
of things, we thought we spotted a harbor seal body floating in the water
just outside of Painted Cave. But I guess it's the circle of life, right? A
gaggle of docents from Morro Bay joined us and were anxious to see how the
naturalists for this park handled. I hope we lived up to the challenge!

Fair weather, fair whales, fair dolphins, fair sea birds, fair sea lions,
fair people, fair company, not-so-fair traffic on the way back home. I had a
really great day. I hope the rest did too! :)

Chris Carlson
chrisjamescarlson at gmail.com
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