Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Risso’s Dolphins”
Stunning sightings of gray whales at Santa Cruz Island We zipped across a rather choppy Santa Barbara Channel with a few white caps today, on our way towards the very fertile whale grounds of Santa Cruz Island. We played briefly with 4 Dall’s porpoises around the middle of the Channel. The great news is that once we were within a …
Two “Wrong Way Corrigan” Gray Whales and More You may have heard the story of Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan who, back in the day, was supposed to fly from New York to Long Beach, California. He landed in Ireland claiming heavy clouds and navigational errors. Well today we had two “Wrong Way Corrigan” gray whales. This is the time of …
Across to beautiful Santa Cruz Island we went today, and it was clear enough to see all 4 of the Channel Islands. At the mid-Channel point we encountered 5 wonderful little Dall’s Porpoise and circled around with them a few times. This is our first Dall’s sighting of the Winter. About 3 miles north of the island we ran alongside …
Spectacular Ocean Vistas and Exceptional Dolphins The remnants of an equatorial tropical storm brought spectacular oceanic and sky conditions to the Santa Barbara Channel today. It was one of “those days” that was such a sensory overload it was hard to absorb it all. The air was very warm and soft with moisture. The Channel views were enormous – from …
3 Different Dolphin Species, etc AND a nice Make Shark! Although NOAA once again predicted doom and gloom for the western Channel, Captain Mat felt differently in his bones. We ran west in very calm seas and worked the island shelf break from western Santa Cruz Island to the western end of Santa Rosa Island in search of whales. The …
Coastal and west island action. Today we had great marine mammal sightings along the coast and again to the far west near Santa Rosa Island, with nothing to see in between. The day started off about a mile and a half outside the Santa Barbara Harbor entrance when Captain Dave decided to take a look-see at some birds and common …
It was mirror, mill pond glass on the Channel today and the sun came out after we ran south about an hour. We picked up several small pods of common dolphins as we passed through the north side and beyond the shipping lanes heading in the general direction of Santa Cruz Island. The sharp eyes of Captain Mat were aided …
Captain Dave headed out of the shoot for the southern edge of the Santa Barbara Channel today, but his trip was interrupted fairly quickly by a humpback whale and some common dolphins pretty darned close to the Harbor. It was a special view with the dorsal surface reflecting off the mirror ocean surface. This is the blue, clear water region …
It was a special 8-hour whale watch trip today with the American Cetacean Society, Los Angeles Chapter, on board. After leaving SEA Landing at 810am, we hadn’t even cleared the breakwater when the call went out. Two bottlenose dolphins playing in the surf near the Sandspit,, moving west along the breakwater. After a nice look at these bottlenose, we headed …
I think I’ll author a journal article entitled “Humpback whales as giant stepping stones to the Santa Barbara Channel Islands.” I’ve got a bit more data to collect and of course all that number crunching. But that is how things shaped up out there today. As Captain Dave and the crew pushed offshore, heading south towards Santa Cruz, the Condor …