Capt. Dave's Ocean Report

As seen weekly in the Dana Point News/Orange County Register

September 8, 2005

We saw lots of common dolphin this week. We found commons on every trip, day after day this week. Then on Sunday we had no dolphins all day, (except a pod spotted a mile and a half from our boat and moving full steam away with not enough time left to pursue). Monday brought pea soup fog in the morning and still no dolphins, (too hard to find in the fog), but it cleared in the afternoon and got nice and then a thousand common dolphins came into view.

We got a report that the Rapture out of Newport spotted a pod of sperm whales between Avalon and San Diego. This alone would be a great sighting but they also spotted an albino sperm whale - a white whale ala Moby Dick. Wow! We have been seeing an albino common dolphin lately; at least my first mate Mark has seen it a few times, but I have not. I have seen photos of all white baleen whales but I have yet to see one of those either.

Here is a photo of a blue whale from last week with a swordfish boat in the background.

We’ve been seeing little patches of red tide occasionally, but I am calling the worst red tide in recent memory – over. There are many theories as to why we had such a bad red tide ranging from our abundant rain in this area washing lots of nutrients into the water creating good conditions for the growth of the tiny one celled dinoflagellates that cause the so called red tide - to the tsunami. Florida and the gulf of Mexico and New England have had one of the worst red tides in decades and some scientist believe the tsunami may have stirred up all the nutrients from the bottom and fertilized the worlds oceans. How’s that for a theory. Speaking of fertilizer we also know that nitrogen in fertilizer and human sewage can cause these red tides to bloom so it could be simply human pollution that is behind it.

Folks from the Natural History Museum in L.A. could not make a positive ID on the Megamouth photos from last week so it will have to stay unconfirmed for now.
Till next week. God bless. Capt. Dave, over and out.

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