Capt. Dave's Ocean Report

As seen weekly in the Dana Point News/Orange County Register
August 18, 2005

We are seeing blue whales - though many of the whales we heard about this week were a bit too far out for us to get to.

We also saw a minke whale this week and lots of common dolphin. See photo of a common dolphin leaping I took this week off San Clemente. Tom and I saw something we could not believe on Saturday: a common dolphin jumped out of the water near us and we could actually see a second little tail fluke sticking out from under it. It was in the process of giving birth! I only saw the dolphin that one time and did not get a photo, though I searched in vain for it over the next hour. She was lost in the crowd. Wow!

I often get asked how we locate these animals; do we use sonar or what? We do not use sonar to locate whales or dolphins. We rely on our eyes and our ears and sometimes even our noses. I am constantly scanning the horizon with my image stabilizing binoculars looking for a splash, or birds circling, or a blow, or an area of disturbed water, or maybe a dolphin or whale itself may be visible. We also rely on a network of fisherman and boaters who will call us with information, and prayer. Hey, don’t knock it till you try it. I find dolphins or whales over 92 percent of the time we go out. God knows where they are.

When I look at what we consistently do, it even surprises me. Example: we went out on Saturday at 9:00 am looked and looked and could not find even one dolphin, though we covered a wide area. The little ones on our boat were all looking pretty sad and everyone on the boat, while trying to have hope and enjoy the trip, seemed pretty limp and hopeless. At this point I wanted to hide somewhere and keep looking for dolphins or whales, but we normally do an interactive dolphin and whale talk with artifacts on the way back to shore. The show had to go on soon, or we would be back at the dock and they would have not only, not seen any dolphins or whales, but they would have missed the edutainment part of the experience as well. I gave it one more look with the binos, which had already been glued to my head for the last two hours, and, yea! I spotted a nice pod of commons out side of us about a mile and a half away heading up the line. We bent it straight out for them on an intercept. Thank you God! I knew this would make us late for the rest of the day, on our next three trips, but these folks would be very happy. After all, we’re not driving to a bus schedule; we sometimes must let the mammals dictate our agenda. We went back out and found that same pod three more times. Each time we left the dolphins we marked the spot where we left them on our GPS (global positioning satellite). And each time we came back out the dolphins were long gone from that position, not a big surprise since they were constantly moving the entire time we were following them. Anyway, each time we came back out we relocated them visually and caught up with them often 3-4 miles from where we left them. On the third trip I anticipated where they might be and went straight out about three miles down the line from where we had last seen them and I spotted them another three miles further down the line.

Last week we did a similar thing with a cow calf pair of blue whales. And let me tell you, it is so hard leaving these animals, knowing you will be looking for them again in an hour or so, and trying to figure out where they will be, based on their previous behavior. It’s a big ocean and though we do it over and over I am still amazed we can relocate a whale that stays invisible, under the water for nearly ten minutes, blows a few times and then disappears again. We relocated that cow calf pair on every Safari that day, even though there were three other blue whales in that area also. And the reason we went out to that spot looking for blues in the first place, was Gary, on the swordfishing boat Avispa. He called us to let us know he was seeing blues out in that area. It’s a big Ocean, but it gets smaller with friends on the water like Gary

Till next week. God bless. Capt. Dave, over and out.

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