<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:tahoma,new york,times,serif;font-size:12pt"><div>Island Packers' Islander, Saturday, 8.16.08 <br><br><ul><li>5 Blue Whales <br></li><li>1000+ <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1219104256_0">Common Dolphins</span> (estimate)</li></ul><br>Naturalists on-board: Carol Celic and Joanna Guttman<br><br>Passengers: 105<br><br>Special guest star: John Calambokidis<br><br><br>The day was perfect for whale watching. It was mildly warm, the skies were overcast and cleared up as we approached the islands, and the ocean was very calm.<br><br>The dolphins were feeding in a few areas on our way out towards SCI. We continued on our way towards the west end of the island when we Captain Dave made contact with a little boat we were passing that turned out to be Cascadia Research's Zodiac. John Calambokidis invited us over to see the two Blues he was monitoring. John then
brought his Zodiac over to talk with the passengers! What an honor it was to hear about the current research that he was doing and for him to answer questions from the passengers! In the process of scanning the water for the temporary tags that John asked us to keep an eye out for, I spotted some whale feces, so I was sure to point it out to the passengers. A few Commons joined the whales for a bit too.The Condor Express then joined us so we went on our way to let them meet up with John and small crew. To answer Scott's question, we didn't see Cascadia Research tag the whales, as John asked us to hold back for a few minutes so they could do that.<br><br>A little while later we came across another pair of Blues, one of them showed the passengers it's very large fluke. There was also another solitary Blue in the area but chose to keep to itself. The Condor Express came over for a look too. We then headed towards SRI. We went through the passage
between SCI and SRI to see if we could spot any other whales, then turned back around and went for a nice cruise along SCI and went to Painted Cave. I was amazed at how far Capt. Dave got the boat in there! We stopped by Prisoners Harbor to pick-up a couple island staff and observed a few Harbor Seals sunning themselves along the cliffs. <br><br>On our way back we stopped by to see the first 2 Blues we came across in the morning and John Calambokidis and his crew were still out there on that Zodiac! This time we could clearly see the suction cup tags that looked like fluorescent orange soda cans on the whales' dorsal region. I also noticed that there appeared to be another disk shaped device on both of the whales, Capt. Dave and I thought it might be more satellite tracking devices. The Blues were again joined by about a dozen Commons.<br><br>After observing the whales for about a half hour we made our journey back to Ventura
Harbor.<br><br>Another amazing day in the Naturalists Corps!<span style="border-bottom: medium none; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; cursor: pointer; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1219104256_1"></span></div></div></body></html>