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News
from Observation Post #7 Meet Michael H. Smith of Gray Whales Count! See the view and join the whale watchers at that counting point with the feature video clip "Waiting for Whales" from the Ventura County Star newspaper. It's almost as good as being there! Here are excerpts from some of Michael's reports, with daily reports available in full on the Gray Whales Count site: February
18: No
whales today. We are in the very beginnings of the northbound migration,
and we
probably will not get the peloton for a couple of weeks. (The peloton
is the pack in a bicycle race.) What we are seeing now are the
break-away juveniles, hungry and heading for northern waters. Soon
recently impregnated females, mostly going solo, will be passing
through the Channel. They will be followed by gangs of whales,
some continuing their mating dance, promenading north. The final
act will be calves paired with their mothers. Many travel right
in front of us and sometimes they pause for play or nursing, or
just to give mom a break. February 17: Two northbound gray whales today! The first was after 11:00 and the second was just after 2:00. Both blew many times and we were able to follow them easily across the Point. February 16: Whale watching season has begun in the Santa Barbara Channel and the target is the northbound migration of gray whales. The whalewatch boat Condor Express comes by the Point, as much as three times a day, during their two-and-a-half hour trips to see whales. Sometimes, they don't come at all. As we all know, not many northbound whales have been seen in the Channel yet, and so the wise Captain Mat of the Condor Express listened to his radio and heard boats in the east Channel talking about a sighting. Instead of west towards Coal Oil Point, he steered the Condor to the east, and he found two whales, indeed northbound, but 25 miles in a straight line from our position. We know whales don't necessarily travel in a straight line. Even so, we were hoping this pair might arrive before 5 p.m. so we could see and count our first northbound whale. In the meantime we carried on as usual. Bottlenose dolphins decided they had plenty of fish here so why go by the Point. They stayed around all day and were always in view. While the dolphin dance was reaching crescendo, two vigilant observers spotted distant blows. It was not our anticipated pair, but it was a young gray whale, heading north, solo. We did not ever see the other whales. We heard from the Condor Express that they headed through mid-Channel, about seven miles offshore. February 15: Two more! At 2:45 p.m. we saw a blow amidst the whitecaps off Campus Point (two miles east of us). It turned out to be two gray whales working their way around the kelp and heading west (northbound). In spite of the chop, we all got good looks and we were able to track them all the way through the area. February
14: Numero uno. We saw our first
northbound gray whale at 11:18! Three
beautiful, heart-shaped blows blows, and an elegant arch into
a dive.
With cameras ready for the Valentine picture, all that could
be documented was ocean. We never saw the whale again. We get
the felling it is going to be one of those years ... February 13: Hey, we saw a whale today. It was going SOUTH but an interesting sighting because it was surrounded by and seemingly escorted by three bottlenose dolphins and a sea lion. February 10: Still no whales, but for the 4th straight year we were thrilled to see a dolphin "queen" we've named Quasimoda, well named and easily identified because of the large lump (tumor) on her back. (See photo at right.) While she is the queen, we appreciated that she brought her full entourage of bottlenose dolphins that chased fish back and forth across, around, and back across the Point for a good part of the day. February 4: Day 8 of our counting. It felt like we were in the middle of the migration, and I guess we are ... the southbound whales are coming on strong. January 28: The count begins. Wonderful to be back on the Point! We got off to a good start with three different sea otters, twenty bottlenose dolphins, and a gray whale, and it was good sized for a southbounder in the nearshore. Most are juveniles. We didn't see any gray whales going north. They'll come.
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