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The SoCal Holy Grail

Most of my more than 5 decades has been as a San Diego resident. I didn’t even know for the first 4 of those that orca actually made appearances off our coast. Really? How could I not have known that? Once learning this, it became a mission of mine to experience them for myself. Easier said than done.

Dana Wharf Whale Watch excellently summarizes the ecotypes of orca that we see of our coast in Southern California as follows.
Dana Wharf Whale Watch
Offshore
Large pods that can number from 20 to 100 individuals is not uncommon for offshores. Latest studies show there might be approximately 250-300 offshore killer whales off the coastline of California, Oregon and Washington. Offshores have been to known to be one of the most well traveled killer whales. One individual was seen in Dutch Harbor, Alaska and then here in Dana Point, that is a 2756 mile journey! Their dorsal fins tend to have a rounded tip and tend to have a closed saddle patch (the white patch located behind the dorsal fin). The diet of offshores consist of large fish and sharks. Offshores have been seen eating blue sharks and sleeper sharks. The rough skin of these sharks causes another unique feature of offshores, worn down teeth. Bodies of mature offshores recovered have shown teeth that are almost worn down to the gums.

Transients
The transient killer whales range covers pretty much the entire West Coast of North America. A transient killer whale that has been seen by Dana Wharf Whale Watching has been seen as far North as British Columbia, Canada. Pods of transients can number to about 10 individuals. Estimates of California transients have not been recently determined but, guesses by biologist range from 105 to possibly 180 individuals. Transients are known to be one of the larger, more heavy bodied ecotypes of killer whales. They tend to have a pointed dorsal fin and closed saddle patch. Marine mammals make up the diet of transient killer whales. Common dolphin, sea lions, harbor seals and elephant seals have been seen being consumed by transients off the coast of California. Gray whale calves are also a frequent prey item for these killer whales.
Eastern Tropical Pacific’s (ETPs)
The Eastern Tropical Pacific killer whales spotted by Dana Wharf Whale Watching have not been placed into a ecotype by researchers at this time, there is still much to learn about the ETPs. The term ETP is used to describe the area these whales are seen, as far South as Peru and as far East towards the Hawaiian Islands. About 195 ETPs have been identified in a catalog published in 2008. A faint to almost non-existent saddle patch is common on these killer whales. They are known to eat marine mammals and have been witnessed preying on bottlenose and common dolphins off the coast of Baja California, Mexico. There is also a case of ETPs preying on mammals as large as a blue whale.

 

Last week a video surfaced on the news of fisherman on a boat with orca “chasing” them reportedly for over an hour, playing in their wake just 35 miles from San Diego.

 

Yeah,  game on whale enthusiasts!  Let’s play follow the orca.  So I kept checking the different whale watching boats sightings logs, Facebook posts, the news and found they had been seen off Newport Beach.  Being a late night internet surfer, I decided to set my alarm for a couple hours from that point and head up to Newport Beach for their first trip out in the morning.

I’ve chased these guys this way before, not really the best method as they move quickly and follow food so they don’t exactly linger in any one area, but it was the best chance I had and any day on the water is better than housecleaning so…

I like Davey’s Locker Whale Watching in Newport Beach so I went out with them.Davey’s Locker Whale Watching   It was a beautiful, warm late summer morning, slight swell, but no wind chop so visibility was terrific.  Our captain was communicating with the other boats out of Newport and Dana Point, hoping to acquire the orca, but in the meantime there was no sign of marine mammal life to be found.  We headed south and after about 45 minutes he announced that boats up ahead were on a pod of orca.  I was a little surprised that the other passengers didn’t completely lose their minds at this point, but it didn’t stop me!  Enthusiasm is contagious and with some excellent narration from the captain the passengers’ excitement grew as we drew closer.

We could see even from a distance the tall dorsal fins and spouts as the whales seemed to go back and forth between the boats that were observing them.  When I pause and worry about the negative effects of whale watching on the whales themselves, I remember things like this.  Those boats were idling and the whales were actively investigating them, fully capable of diving and disappearing quickly if they were bothered by the activity.  When we approached, we became part of the whales’  path of exploration, offering us excellent views of this most rare of Southern California sightings.

Pardon the video quality,  cell phone in bright sunlight in the hands of an overly excited amateur…

As you can see from the video, the saddle patches on these particular whales are quite pale, almost difficult to see on a couple of them which is one of the characteristics of this ecotype, the Eastern Tropical Pacific or ETP.  This made it an even more exciting sighting, as they are rarely seen in our waters.  We were able to spend about 20 minutes with the whales before we had to head back in to dock.  They were speeding south at a pretty good pace, but I hoped they would turn around so I took the next trip out too.  They did not turn around and we did not catch up to them on the second trip.  That is how hard it is to anticipate finding them based on when they were just seen!

Best Snorkel Ever

I have gotten very spoiled with excellent luck with animal sightings when I go on any kind of excursion, be it whale watching, bear photo safari, bird watching or whatever. It ends up I do not have the magic touch with scuba diving trips to see manta rays. Two years in a row we went on boat dives to swim with the majestic animals, confident that we will have a dozen or so swooping past us so close that it will be hard to film. Crickets. Or rather, snapping shrimp. The company we went with, Kona Honu Divers, rebounded admirably with a very nice reef dive where we were able to find some great night activity. But still, we really wanted to see those manta rays.

This year after our second fruitless dive we went snorkeling at Two Step. I had read that the dolphins come in to Honaunau Bay quite often so I wanted to go out deep into the bay and see what happened. Dan was game for that so we ignored the beautiful wildlife that was evident around the rocks in the clear water as we entered and struck out for the middle of the bay. We kept swimming, with no real destination in mind and eventually Dan looked up and started to say he hadn’t seen anything in a while. Just as I sensed his head come up next to me, I saw below us the majestic wings of a manta ray emerging from the amazing blue water. I started punching the water frantically trying to get him to look back down and then we were able to enjoy the magic of the ray together. Dan even got it all with the GoPro.

We learned that each ray has unique, identifiable markings on its back and that the couple hundred that cruise the coast of the big island are all documented and “named”. We noticed that this ray seemed to have some damage on the edge of its wing, maybe made by a shark. It was amazing to watch as it raised and lowered the cephalic fins on either side of its mouth depending on whether it was feeding or searching. At times it paused on the down current side of a cluster of rocks on the bottom and lowered the cephalic fins, appearing to hover there and feed for a bit off of the nutrients coming across the rock grouping. Those pauses were probably the reason we were able to follow it for a bit. The ray was able to flick a wing and smoothly “fly” off against the current at a seemingly effortless pace, far exceeding any speed we could maintain. After watching for a few blissful minutes we faded back and let the ray slip back into the deep blue water, leaving us wondering if that had really happened. We were absolutely euphoric and decided we were happier with that natural encounter than we would have been with the manta ray dive, where they are attracted by large lights that bring plankton in for them and divers sit in a large circle on the floor as they swim through the light over and over. It was great to see this ray, doing what rays do, which is cruising the coast finding plankton naturally occurring along the way. It came close to us of its own free will, we were able to watch it soar in its natural environment and it was just the two of us experiencing it together.

When we calmed down a bit from that amazing encounter we decided we would head over to the edge of the bay and work our way back to our exit point by snorkeling around the rocks and enjoying the usual rich life found there. At this point we were probably about 2 miles out and dead center of the bay. We put our heads down and swam, seeing nothing of consequence along the way. The bottom dropped away and all we could see was deep blue going on forever. Dan looked up again and said it was boring, maybe we should head in another direction. I looked up to see where we were, where else we might want to head and immediately noticed 4 or 5 fins about 50 feet in front of us. The snorkel had just turned from our best ever to off the charts! As soon as we put our heads back down we had pods of spinner dolphins swimming past us, around us, under us and practically through us. Check out how close this group came to Dan. He could have reached out and touched them. And be sure and look for the teeth that you can see on the closest one.

We ended up swimming with this pod of over 50 dolphins for close to an hour and a half as they split off and jumped and spun in the distance then came back to join the group, dove straight down and disappeared for a while returning suddenly from the other direction or suddenly all disappeared only to suddenly reappear underneath us a few minutes later. They were clearly comfortable with our presence and I had a chance to swim alongside a couple of them for a few seconds, maintaining eye contact and they slowed to check me out before they dove with the rest of the pod.

The whole time we spent with them we could see a bunch of people back at the snorkel entry point watching us. No one came out to swim with them. We were still quite a ways out, but nothing would have stopped me if I had been on the beach watching us out there with them. We finally headed for the beach, even though the dolphins were still there. We had been in the water for about two and a half hours, were completely blissed out and finally dragged ourselves away from our new friends.

At the entry and exit point at Two Step if you look down, stones and shells are arranged to spell out Aloha on the sea floor. It must be maintained daily by visitors and I found it completely enchanting.

No doubt we were feeling the aloha and offering a very heartfelt mahalo in return.

Newport Beach Whalewatching Fall 2017

On a beautiful crisp fall day last week I decided to drive up to Newport Beach and check out a whalewatching trip I hadn’t been on before. A brief pleasant call to Davey’s Locker and I was all set to go on their 1:00 trip. I arrived about 10 minutes before the scheduled departure time and after a brief time trying to find the office was signed in by their friendly staff. I noticed they had full sized binoculars to rent for $5 which is a nice touch. When I queued up to board I also was able to avail myself of clean public restrooms right next to the boarding area which was very convenient and welcome.

Since this was to be my first trip with this outfit, I wanted to learn as much as I could so that I could offer the best information about it that I could. To that end, I purchased the Captain’s Experience which allowed me to stay in a cordoned off area just outside the wheelhouse with a window through to talk with the Captain and unobstructed view of the front rail on the upper deck starboard side. It also afforded me a drink ticket for something from the fully stocked bar, which takes some getting used to, since I am often acting as a naturalist on whalewatching trips and not able to indulge. Chelsea, the professional photographer onboard, volunteered herself to serve as my steward as well so I didn’t even need to leave the action to get refreshments. Pretty nice deal!

The boat itself is a beautiful, well kept, clean catamaran with nice bench seating upstairs and around the outside of the lower deck. The inside of the lower deck is plush like a yacht, with banquette seating at tables by windows and sofas and coffee tables in the center of the room. The bar is wisely set up at front of this salon. It is easy to move about and comfortable.

Going out of Newport is nice because you start out cruising by amazing waterfront homes with very nice boats parked all over the place and then, boom, quick as that, you are out of the channel and into the ocean. This time as soon as we hit the Pacific a large bottle nosed dolphin splashed right next to the boat. Captain Larry immediately pulled up and allowed the dolphins to continue their path and maneuvered so that we could all get a glimpse of these very large on shore dolphins that are normally associated with shows in captivity or surfing the waves along the coast. This was a small group of 3 of 4 that was not particularly interested in engaging with us so we soon broke off and went out to sea looking for more sea life.

We got a report that there was no sign of mammals if we were to head north, so we took off down south towards Laguna. It had turned into a spectacular day, the rain had cleared out leaving crystal clear air, high clouds and sun, rain squalls visible miles in the distance, unbelievable visibility, and calm clear water. We could see detail on Catalina Island and even make out one of the smaller islands out there as well. If anything was surfacing and breathing, we would spot it! Captain Larry was scanning the whole time with some very high powered binoculars, Chelsea was using her telephoto, I was helping out with my 7 x 35’s when Larry asked if we saw it. He had spotted way down south a pod of dolphins that were out of range of my binos. In fact it was a good 3 or 4 minutes of solid cruising before I could spot them, so now I have Santa’s list filled out! He wasn’t sure if we could get to them before we had to turn around to get back in time for the 3:30 trip but he let it rip full speed and they didn’t move, or maybe even came a little north to meet us. This time it was a pod of about 250 common dolphins and they seemed to have just finished feeding so were ready to play with the boat and made the mad dash to meet them worth it. On one side of the boat the sun was glinting beautifully off the water, highlighting them in dark relief and on the other side of the boat you could see several feet into the water, to view them as they swam in the bow wave alongside us.
Captain Larry skillfully navigated his way into the midst of them as they came storming at us and they fell into place along side of us and behind us, surfing and porpoising in the bow wave, twisting and jumping around each other. It was a joyful experience and our captain was able to switch direction and speed to give them different ways to play with the boat and us different ways to see them. I was very impressed with the intuitive way he interacted with the dolphins. As they slowly lost interest he warned us that he was only going to pass through one more time, did so and headed north to make it back in time. I appreciated his consideration for the animals and how in tune with them he was. I will definitely come back during gray whale season to go out with him on this marvelous boat.

Chelsea was offering her beautiful photographs of the day’s sightings for sale as we disembarked. A bargain $10 for the pictures and 2 vouchers for $7 return trips. I thought that was a really nice offering and can imagine on a day with interesting whales it would be really nice to purchase.

Even though we saw only small toothed whales, dolphins, everyone’s spirits were high as we docked and I could tell that this was a well run operation that kept its guests happy.

You can easily make a day out of it by visiting Balboa Island, a ferry ride across the channel ($1.50 per passenger, $2.00 per car) or hanging out in lovely Newport Beach with its carnival rides, beachy shops and plentiful restaurants. Or, if you’re like me, just going back out!

Whale Parts from the Cabinets at the San Diego Natural History Museum

One of the nice things about volunteering as a whaler (a naturalist on the Hornblower whale watching cruises out of San Diego) for the San Diego Natural History Museum, is that you can pop in to the museum at any time to check out a few items that go on display.  You are also given the odd notice that a whale penis is going to be exhibited, so get on over there and see it, because their original owners don’t really display that for us in the wild too often!  You haven’t fully experienced life as a whale geek until you have asked a docent at the museum if they know where to find the whale penis.

I thought maybe some other people would be interested in these curiosities so I took some pictures and video and thought I would post them here.  The most inconspicuously displayed piece in the collection was the penis, hung over a cabinet of preserved reptiles that were sure to catch your attention making it easy to ignore the 8 foot (or so) penis hanging above.  It was not labelled as to what kind of whale,  my husband quickly quipped “sperm whale” when someone pondered out loud about it.  NAT whale penis

A little research on whale penises was in order if I were to actually post this provocative picture.  So, blue whales have the largest penis of any known living animal.  It can measure anywhere from 8 to 10 feet long and is hidden in a genital slit for a more streamlined silhouette for swimming and also to protect the reproductive organs.   Matthew Dean from The University of Southern California has done some study on whale penises and pelvic bones.  “The penis of a whale or a dolphin is very dextrous,” says Dean. “It has a mind of its own.” Specifically, it’s controlled by two strong muscles that pull with differing tension to let the organ change shape. “I think of it like a trick kite, controlled by two strings and capable of complex motion. That’s a whale’s penis to me.”

I thought that deserved a closer look.

Another interesting piece that was on exhibit was a narwahl tusk.  This is something that I really did not want to discover was so beautiful.  The idea that a single thing so desirable exists on a unicorn like animal makes me fear for the whales, but it does deserve to be seen.

NAT norwahl tusk side

NAT norwahl tusk front
Close up

As with most things in nature, that which is exquisite in form is often exquisite in function. Many things have been theorized about this up to 9 foot left canine tooth.  A weapon, sexual dimorphism, a literal ice breaker?

It ends up that they have adapted one of the most sensitive echolocation systems in existence.   Like dolphins and other whales they produce clicks and use the sound waves bouncing off their surroundings to form a view of their environment.  But the tooth doesn’t have the protection of hard, external enamel and that makes it sensitive to stimuli, giving them an advantage over all other echolocating species.

Scientists suspect that the tooth plays a role in echolocation by allowing seawater to enter it through pores in its tip. Bubbles then travel through the shaft and excite nerve endings at the base of the tooth near the head, sending signals to the brain about the narwhal’s surroundings.

The tooth is also used in dominance fighting amongst each other, as evidenced by marks on the tusks themselves.

They have also filmed the first proof that they use the tusk to find and stun their prey while hunting.  Here’s the first drone video of that phenomenon.

So, let’s keep these beautiful appendages on these amazing beasts!

And the final specimen I wanted to share is this spectacular lower jaw of a sperm whale.

 

And I just pulled a Wikipedia blurb on the jaw for you, because I couldn’t find anything too spectacular about it, beyond it’s sheer existence.

The sperm whale’s lower jaw is very narrow and underslung.[48] The sperm whale has 18 to 26 teeth on each side of its lower jaw which fit into sockets in the upper jaw.[48] The teeth are cone-shaped and weigh up to 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) each.[49] The teeth are functional, but do not appear to be necessary for capturing or eating squid, as well-fed animals have been found without teeth or even with deformed jaws. One hypothesis is that the teeth are used in aggression between males.[50] Mature males often show scars which seem to be caused by the teeth. Rudimentary teeth are also present in the upper jaw, but these rarely emerge into the mouth.[51] Analyzing the teeth is the preferred method for determining a whale’s age. Like the age-rings in a tree, the teeth build distinct layers of cementum and dentine as they grow.

So that is what real whale geeks do when they go to Balboa Park for the December Nights holiday light event that draws approximately 350,000 people to the park.  We take pictures of whale junk.  Literally.