Yesterday, like today, was grey and misty with occassional rain offshore here in SOCAL. With the rain and stronger winds further offshore in the afternoon we again couldn’t get all the way out to the deep-water areas we wanted to. However, we did manage to work out of Catalina to the west and by mid-morning came across a group of fin whales. The photo below (taken under NMFS permit #14534 – photo credit E. Falcone) shows one of these whales with Catalina in the grey background and bumpy seas.
We managed to tag one and followed it for the rest of the day conducting visual observations, mapping potential prey fields along it’s track, and ultimately conducting a controlled sound exposure experiment. The animal continued it’s southward track until the tag came off later in the day and our small boat recovered it before a wet and dark ride back to meet us. Our work out here is certainly exciting and enjoyable and we believe we are addressing important questions, but it’s definitely hard work especially on days like yesterday. We are very fortunate on this project to have so many talented and hard-working people from many different organizations (see: www.socal-brs.org for more details).