Capt. Dave's Ocean Report

As seen weekly in the Dana Point News/Orange County Register
August 11, 2005

Yea! We are seeing blue whales. The last four days Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and Monday we saw blue whales on nearly every trip. On Friday after a lone blue whale dove down near us we lowered our new hydrophone in the water to see if we could pick up any sounds it might be making. We had to turn off all the filtration we normally use to filter out the engine noise and water noise. We shut down the engine and quietly listened – the whale squealed with laughter, sounding just like a child, no it was a child. We did not hear anything unusual for a good while then we started hearing a growling sound and then a low pulsing woo woo type sound – unmistakably a blue whale. It sounded exactly like the blue whale recording by Josh MacDonald that I used in my film. I could not believe it; we were listening to a blue whale live. My passengers took it in stride not knowing the significance of what they were hearing. We could now determine the sex of the whale since male blue whales are believed to be the only ones to vocalize like this. Wow!

(Hey guys, don’t look now but there’s a Blue Whale behind you!)

We weren’t even sure we would be able to hear blue whales without first recording the sounds and changing the speed of them during playback, because much of the sound they make is too low a frequency for humans to hear. FYI - blue whales and fin whales produce a low frequency moan that is so loud it can be heard over a thousand miles away, under the right conditions.

On one of our trips this week we had a gang of three jet skiers follow us out of the harbor for eight miles till we located a blue whale then they proceeded to head right over to it. The whale, which had been going in one direction for a while, made a sharp right turn. I informed them that disturbing these whales could get them a big fine and suggested they stay back a bit. Then I asked their apparent leader whether he had a compass, since we could not see land because of the almost fog like conditions, and we were about to head back. He confidently showed me his hand held compass and innocently said he was following me any way, so he wasn’t worried. I should have gotten their credit card numbers and charged them for a Whale Safari.

We are still seeing a lot of black jellyfish, Poralia. These odd looking, four-tentacled, burgundy colored jellyfish are rare to be found in this area, they are normally found in Baja, see the photo of one I took this week.

We are still seeing lots of common dolphins and many calves.

Lots of Mola molas around, (ocean sunfish) this week.

I failed to mention it, but last week we saw a handful of pacific whitesided dolphins. We only rarely see them in the summer.

Well, that’s it - till next week. God bless. Capt. Dave, over and out.

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