Today the offshore forecast remained poor and the inshore seas were a mixture of swell and shop from different directions.  With the conditions, we turned our attention back to Risso’s dolphins (below photo credit A. Friedlander, taken under NMFS permit #14534) and offshore blue whales.  We found both and tried for the combo, but oddly only got the Risso’s.  They headed to Catalina, but we followed them and managed to complete a successful playback this afternoon.  On the way back in we heard some distant sperm whales, which has us intrigued about another possible species tomorrow.  Stay tuned.  We will also try to put up a few posts on some of our different teams and some interesting things we have seen out here in the beautiful Channel Islands.

We thought people might like to see a short video clip <click on: TagOnBeakedWhaleSmall> showing the tag attachment of the suction cup tag on a Cuvier’s beaked whale from a few days ago, taken from the sound source boat.  You can notice how glassy calm it was out to the west of Santa Barbara Island at the time.