We’ve had some pretty good conditions in deeper water the last few days and have had success finding baleen whales in deeper water and have spent a lot of time searching for beaked whales as well. From the picture below you can see the calm conditions we have had in 800-1000m kinds of water. This has been great in terms of focusing on some key species in areas more like where they might be more likely to encounter real sonar. For today and tomorrow (our last day of the first leg), we hope to have this weather in 1500m canyons way offshore where we would expect to be more likely to find the deep-diving beaked whales that are an important species in this study. You can also see in this picture the safety helmets we have been using when tagging large whales.
We spent last night on Catalina, but didn’t really see it as we arrived after dark and left before sunrise, although we did watch masses of schooling flish flying around being chased by sea lions by our lights. Kind of an aquatic fireworks display. We will be out of touch working in the Channel Islands today and tomorrow so this may be the last posting before we finish tomorrow night. Hopefully the offshore forecasts will ring true. As we are pulling away from Catalina with bottlenose dolphins flipping out in our quarterwake it looks pretty smooth out here…