A great blue heron was perched right next to the Condor Express before we left the dock this morning.
Hot Weather on Land and a Parade of Marine Life on the Ocean
The beautiful Santa Barbara Channel will be a fantastic place to cool off later this week as temperatures are supposed to soar again. It was hot today, but once the mighty Condor Express got going and we moved offshore to the sea breeze zone, things were marvelous. The sky was blue, the ocean water was clear, and a very very little swell rolled by from the west. Long beaked common dolphins, over 500 individuals, paid us a visit as we looked around for their larger cetacean cousins. I never get enough of watching the #dolphins carrying on in the clear water. Not far to the east we found ourselves in vast regions of predatory sea birds and California sea lions. The black vented shearwaters are still out there, but their numbers are lower. Hundreds of red necked phalaropes were observed today, and not so many squawking elegant terns in the sky. Shearwaters were diving all around us in the blue water. Before long we had racked-up an impressive 5 closely watched humpback whales, with one or two other spouts in the distance. “Scarlet” (the large whale with the deep propeller scar) was on the scene, and her small companion “Shorty” was there too. Sure enough, Shorty took off and breached a couple of times a few hundred yards from the boat, then rolled around and slapped its long pectoral flukes at us. Many of the #whales today came close and paid us a friendly visit…again the experience was enhanced by the crystal waters. A couple of Minke whales popped up and went down, so unless you were looking right at that spot, you missed them. I’ll post the photos I took today on the web sometime tomorrow.
Schedule notes: We are not running a public whale watch tomorrow, Wednesday, but you should sign up now and come out Wednesday through Sunday. You never know what Mother Nature has in store. Bob Perry Biologist and Photographer
on the web: www.CondorExpress.com/blog