We spent the first four days of the second leg of SOCAL-11 well offshore working deep basins and canyons in search of beaked whales. Sorry for being out of touch,but we have spent the last three nights we stayed near Santa Cruz, San Nicholas, and Santa Barbara Islands, hiding in the lee at anchor and without internet access. We had several visual sightings and acoustic detections with good working conditions in the mornings, but in marginal weather conditions by afternoon and we did not manage to stay with the animals that were detected long enough to get tags attached. We did have a tag on an offshore blue whale briefly today but the tag slid off before we could get to a controlled sound exposure. Risso’s dolphins are a priority species for SOCAL-BRS and we have had quite a few encounters with them, including a dozen or so sightings, several focal follows, a few close approaches for tag attachment with one being successful today. The weather forecast is again a bit marginal tomorrow but we will have all assets out searching deeper water areas for beaked whales and offshore baleen whales and shelf areas for additional options with Risso’s dolphins.
Risso’s dolphin in southern California (A. Friedlaender — taken under NMFS permit #14534)