Captain Dave's Ocean Report

November 22, 2004

We saw some large pods of common dolphin this week along with pacific whitesided and something we don't see very often - two fin whales.

Fin whales are the second largest whales in the world (only blue whales are bigger). They can grow to be about 78 feet in this area. The southern hemisphere fin whales are slightly larger. One of the fastest whales, fin whales are called the greyhounds of the sea, because of their speed, they can travel up to 23 mph. We still don't know very much about fin whales, it is believed that some of them stay off California year round and some may head south in the winter. Fin whales and blue whales actually produce the loudest sound of any animal in the world, it is a low frequency moan, that under the right conditions can be heard over a thousand miles away - (if you're a whale that is since the moan is too low for human ears to hear). Researchers now believe it is the males who produce this sound to attract females to an area where the food is plentiful so they can mate with them. Human males do something similar when pizza and beer are plentiful. Yes folks researchers now believe human belching may be the lonely male humans attempt to attract females to a good food source, since it is done most frequently by males when there are no females present. Under the right conditions these sounds can be heard next door. Sorry, pay no attention to the last three sentences. Anyway, fin whales are often difficult to track but we stayed with them for over an hour. They stayed down for about seven and a half minuets at a time as they headed up the coast. At one point they surfaced right near the boat, which elicited screams from my delighted passengers. See photo

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That's it till next week. Capt. Dave over and out.

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