Celebrating Mothers’ Day in Grand style in the Santa Barbara Channel on a full day of sunshine for us, a Gray-whale calf trumpets the arrival of a following pair in this synchronized group of six, passing Counter Point.

With many human-type families lining the fence later in the day, the pressure was high on Counters to demonstrate their observation abilities; and, Patty Malone, one of the original survey-team members from 2005 and who has participated in every Count since, sighted a mother/calf pair and the crowd let out a cheer for Patty and the whales.

For us, this was Cow/calf pair number 8 on a day we tallied 9 — day number 83 of a very crazy year.

Gray whales northbound (all) 19 | Calves 9 — 2015 Count 1346 | 210

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