We’ve been offshore for another few days on the first phase of our SOCAL-13 experiment and just back in to recharge for our last few days. We have had reasonably good conditions the last few days and have been searching for beaked whales but haven’t had the luck with them we had last week. We have had two tags out on a fin whale (below – taken under NMFS #14534 by J. Calambokidis) and a blue whale near the busy shipping lanes out of Long Beach.

After almost a whole phase of our project we hadn’t seen the sperm whale we had seen and documented on each field phase of this project since 2010. Affectionately known as Mango, an adult male sperm whale that has been identified in this area for over 20 years has been a regular occurrence for us out here. Apparently he knew we were almost done with our work for these two weeks as he made a cameo appearance yesterday allowing us to get some photo ID pictures to continue the long time series documentation of his movement (below taken under NMFS #14534 by A. Friedlaender).