News
from Observation Post #7
Coal Oil Point, Channel Islands, California, USA
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.
NOAA scientists have predicted a productive year for calves,
after the very unproductive 2006-7 migration. The conditions
were good
in Alaska, and there were large numbers of southbounders, healthy
and heading for Mexico. Observers reported several sightings
of calves born well before the lagoons. We hope all those
calves make
it down and back, along with hundreds of their young brethren.
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 ...
But, nothing could dampen our spirits. We made it through the
early morning sprinkle, and we had our first of maybe seven
hundred whales!
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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Coal
Oil Point, California
(34.40N,
-119.69W)
|
No
whales, but here's Dolphin "Queen" Quasimoda" (foreground) Feb.
10
Photo Scott Leon
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