This is a kinda funny-peculiar image of a sea lion. Had it been a video, it would have been funny-ha ha. We saw the California sea lion come on the rocky shore in the late afternoon. We had seen a similar looking sea lion come ashore two days ago that was injured and in need of a rescue. This was not that sea lion. This sea lion rolled over and proceeded to scratch its back for a minute or two, gyrating in a contented way, and then walk back into the ocean. Good job!

We had other surprises: the fog was not bad and we started on time and got in a full day. We also saw a lot of whales, mostly northbound Gray whales. Our lone southbounder crossed us at ten minutes to five. We spent five minutes scanning both directions because we were not immediately certain of the direction it was headed. Two more surfacings more than confirmed east (southbound).

We managed four sightings of northbound Gray whales. At ten thirty a large, maybe female, single surfaced regularly and fluked after second surfacings in each breathing cycle. Fifty minutes later, a smaller, perhaps juvenile, whale followed with short downtimes, sometimes only one surfacing per cycle. It seemed like it was trying to catch the whale ahead.

At two-twenty, we spotted blows straight out, pretty far out. There were lots of blows, with whales in a 2 - 1 - 2 formation. They stayed two and a half miles offshore, blowing up a storm, and passing the outside of Platform Holly.

We were not done. At three-thirty a Counter caught blows to the east. It was a pair aligned lead and trail that pushed west from the dark into the late afternoon muted sunlight.

Bottlenose dolphins, traveling west were our last sighting of the day. We sighted Common dolphins three times in relatively small groups. A relatively large group of sea lions follow the last group of Commons west.

And, we had a few sightings of Harbor seals.

When the day was over, Bob Perry on the Condor, reported a large group of False Killer whales outside Santa Barbara Harbor, eleven miles east of our site. We are hoping we can catch a glimpse tomorrow.

Gray whales northbound (all) 9 | Calves 0 — 2015 Count 024 | 000

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