We’ve had fairly good to excellent seas offshore the past few days and have put in some time trying to work some of our more difficult/less common species like beaked whales and sperm whales. In some of these offshore areas we might expect to find Risso’s dolphins or fin whales as well. Yesterday we had a number of likely detections of beaked whales with a few brief surface series, but these were single individuals and despite some concerted efforts we didn’t manage to tag one.
We have continued to maintain our mode of flexibility, though and later in the day yesterday as conditions deteriorated offshore we worked back in to nice waters and tagged two blue whales and successfully completed a CEE. We are a little more than halfway through our first leg here — 14 tags on blue whales with 8 CEEs and the 1 Risso’s tag and CEE. We’ll be trying to work offshore again today — with a little more fog on us than was the case in the below evening shot of beautiful Dana Point.