We had good weather offshore today and we tried for most of the day well offshore in good visibility species looking for beaked whales. We surveyed fairly large areas of offshore banks and basins looking and listening, but didn’t have any luck. We came across several small groups and single blue and fin whales offshore and an aggregation feeding up on the shelf and by the end of the day we found a small group of blue whales feeding in quite deep water well offshore.
PHY
The photo above shows a tag on the left side of a blue whale collecting data about the movement and sounds received (and made) by the animal (J. Calambokidis, Cascadia Research, collected under NMFS permit #14534).
We are still aiming for beaked whales and hope to have good conditions tomorrow morning out from San Diego. However, we are quite interested in testing the differences in responses of marine mammals in the various kinds of habitats in which they live and are exposed to human sounds. Today’s CEE with offshore blue whales was very useful in that regard.