God's Creations..... Tuesday, March 3rd..

Please note that these images are not 100% processed yet. I wanted to share with you my day, so I decided to fully process these later, but get a couple of them up now to share. :)

Yesterday was an amazing day out in the Santa Barbara Channel just off of Ventura.

Just off of Santa Cruz Island, we came upon two Humpbacks. They were feeding in the area and we watched a few cycles of blow with a couple of lazy tail flukes. After about 20-30 minutes, the crew decided to head over towards Anacapa Island to check out the very large group of Common Dolphins heading our way. They love the boats. Well, as we were turning around to head the opposite way of the Humpbacks, someone yelled, "Wow, look at that breach". They Humpbacks breached three times in a row and a spy hop. They have been known to do that when you start leaving them. Its almost like they are saying, "don't leave".

We waited to see if anything else was going to happen, but just a couple of breathing cycles and a tail fluke (wave good-bye) as they went on their deeper dive, so we headed off to the dolphins.

Dolphins were EVERYWHERE. Thousands of them. Yes, thousands. Even little babies tagging along beside their mother. In some areas, the water was like glass, shiny blue... Just beautiful!

Dave; the captain took us around to Arch Rock (east end of Anacapa Island) to view the Harbor Seals on the rocks. They were sunbathing as the sun peaked through the clouds as the Pelicans were flying everywhere.

As we headed back to the harbor, we kept our eyes out for a northern migrating gray whale, but we didn't see one. Its a hit and miss right now as we are in-between the southern and northern migrations, but it was still a fabulous day.

Hope everyone is doing good. Have a wonderful week... :)

What's Up With Mondays????

Hmmm... As I sat there today at the point keeping an eye out for a whale, I was wondering what was up with Mondays... Why Mondays seem to be low number days where the other days, ya know the days I am not there, having much higher count of whales passing by the point or milling around out near the islands in the far distance? My partner quickly agreed as we laughed.

Yesterday started the fifth week, and due to a lot of time not being able to count because of the bad weather, the count team has reached a total number of 97 northern migrating gray whales. Only about 10 of those have occurred on a Monday and definitely no Humpbacks in the distance, on a Monday.

Today we did see one gray whale surface twice before it disappeared into thin air. Yes, another day of a shy whale. However, later in the day, after my shift, they spotted two gray whales and could track them a short distance.

We had two otters in the area surviving the high surf from the weather. A couple of beautiful white Egrets, some Pelicans faking us out with splashes making us think possible blows out towards the islands and a dozen Bottlenose Dolphins passing by heading east (south).

Have a great week....

P.S.
BTW... Another mammal appearing in the Santa Barbara Channel extremely early this year; the largest mammal in the world; a Blue Whale was sighted off of Santa Rosa today by a whale watch company. When a Blue Whale is sighted in mid May, that is considered early, but for some reason, the whales are appearing early in the channel this year.