Rock & Roll

Coachella: hmmmm

Goleta: Now you're talkin' … Sweet tunes, a record!

We set a Counter Point record for Gray whale northbound calves sighted in one day: sweet sixteen.

It stated at one minute past nine and continued all day. One cow/calf pair seemed to want to stay right in front of us the entire day. We sighted it, tracked it, and lost it. We lost the pair because the whales didn't go anywhere. They had long downtimes right in front of us. The water was still and clear. More than once we saw the mother and calf gently gliding towards the surface and quietly breathing … right in front of us. Beautiful.

Perhaps the surprise of day was the single whales chugging by about a mile and a half offshore.

Many of the pairs were pairs of pairs. And, often, however they were matched they had another pair or group of pairs closely following.

This year we are testing the feasibility of taking photoID images of the mother and calf pairs. It was very hard today because of all the action. Where does one focus attention?

This was just a fabulous day, and all the Counters, especially Kristel Ma and John Koopman did terrific work. They maintained the datasheet and coordinated the Counters as they tracked and reported positions. Hard work, and very, very fun!

Amazingly, we also noted Bottlenose dolphins, including a large group of eleven, and we saw one of our Harbor seals whenever there was a pause in the action, which was not too often.

Let's dance.

Gray whales northbound (all) 36 | Calves 16 — 2012 Count 514 | 023

Hours 8:00