A view of Redondo Beach from the the Voyager.

Brad Sawyer captains the Voyager during a whale watching trip. Photo by Chelsea Sektnan.

Gray whales are often seen because of their ‘blow’ which can reach up to 15 feet. Photo by Chelsea Sektnan.

Peggy, a naturalist, explains the gray whale blow to passengers on the Voyager. Photo by Chelsea Sektnan.

The Voyager also encountered dolphins. Photo by April O. House.

Photo by Chelsea Sektnan.

Whale watching takes patience and a sharp eye. Phot by Chelsea Sektnan.

Orca with calf fluking nearby. Photo by Ron Charbonneau.

Families ca51c and ca51d ca52 near Palo Verdes. Photo by Alisa Schulman-Janiger

Families ca51c and ca51d ca52 near Palo Verdes. Photo by Alisa Schulman-Janiger

Families ca51c and ca51d ca52 near Palo Verdes. Photo by Alisa Schulman-Janiger

Families ca51c and ca51d ca52 near Palo Verdes.Photo by Alisa Schulman-Janiger

Families ca51c and ca51d ca52 near Palo Verdes.Photo by Alisa Schulman-Janiger

Orca pod swimming to Malibu from the Santa Monica Bay on Jan. 4. Photo by Redondo Beach spotfishing photographer Sam Wickline.

Orca pod swimming to Malibu from the Santa Monica Bay on Jan. 4. Photo by Redondo Beach spotfishing photographer Sam Wickline.

Orca pod swimming to Malibu from the Santa Monica Bay on Jan. 4. Photo by Redondo Beach spotfishing photographer Sam Wickline.

Orca pod swimming to Malibu from the Santa Monica Bay on Jan. 4. Photo by Redondo Beach spotfishing photographer Sam Wickline.

A sailboat gets close to a whale in the Santa Monica Bay. Photo by Alex Smith.

Gray whale off the Palos Verdes coast. Photo by April O. House.

Gray whale off the Palos Verdes coast. Photo by April O. House.

Gray whale off the Palos Verdes coast. Photo by April O. House.

Gray whale off the Palos Verdes coast. Photo by April O. House.

Whale watchers on the Voyager come into the Harbor after a three hour tour.

This time of year is typically when gray whales travel through the Santa Monica Bay on their annual 10,000-to- 14,000-mile migration from cold Alaskan feeding grounds down to the warm nursery lagoons of Baja California. They generally spend summer and early fall gorging in arctic waters on the muddy sea-bottom, primarily on amphipods – tiny shrimp-like creatures – often consuming a ton of food per day. After leaving the Artic waters, they won’t feed again until returning next spring.

But in their long journeys both north and south, the gray whales become food. Killer whales, also known as orcas, are famed for their cooperative hunting. And they love nothing more than to hunt, and feed, on young gray whales.

As everybody on the Voyager and an accompanying skiff was in route, people watching from the Interpretive Center got quite an eyeful. Five killer whales, a mom and her two juvenile calves along with another mom’s two juveniles she was apparently babysitting, rendezvoused with the lone adult gray whale for a lesson on marine life. To people on the shore, it looked more like an attack. The juveniles were learning from killer whale CA51 (the naming sequence given to orcas in the area) about the potentially 35-ton lone mammal.

“They were splashing and harassing the gray whale,” said Schulman-Janiger. “It seemed to go on forever for the poor observers [at the PVIC viewing platform].”

The interaction lasted three to five minutes, and afterwards the group of orcas continued on their northward path to Malibu, likely with more hunting lessons along the way. The gray whale appeared to be physically unscathed, but went closer to shore into a bed of kelp for about 20 minutes before continuing on its path south.

The whale-watching skiff stayed with the pod of orcas for about an hour until they met up with the other five members of the two families, including the matriarchs CA51 and CA140. Along the way they counted about three sea lion kills. “Nothing graphically violent,” saidStanton.

“In my opinion, it was a meet-and-greet, but the gray whale didn’t like the meeting,” said Schulman-Janiger. “It was probably the introduction of a gray whale to the juveniles. ‘This is a gray whale, we attack the calves, let’s take a look and let’s move on.’”

When orcas do attack gray whales, it’s generally done by multiple transient males and females, not by a female with four juveniles, and usually their target is not a fully grown adult. “They are not the type to be a predator,” said Schulman-Janiger. “They definitely did meet, and it’s the only time our census observers have witnessed that sort of interaction in 28 years.”

“It’s watching nature live, not like you’re watching it on National Geographic,” said Voyager captain Brad Sawyer. “I did forewarn everybody before we got out there because some people find it repulsive. It’s not like the orcas can just call up Dominos and order up a large anchovy pizza.”

The CA51 family is not new to the area, according to Schulman-Janiger. They have visited Santa Monica Bay frequently with different families in tow. “The CA51s are the most boat friendly transient killer whales in California,” said Schulman-Janiger. “We really like to see them because they choose to come up to the boat and sometimes even rub themselves on it.”

Although the family often interacts with humans, there are laws against humans interacting with them.

Alex Smith, a local boater from Hermosa  Beach, watched in horror over the weekend as a boat with a group of people followed too closely to a whale and almost t-boned another boat. “There are a lot of [idiots] out there,” said Smith. “People drink and don’t pay attention to what they are doing. They are ignorant of the animals and disrespectful…. Two years ago I heard that a guy on a jet ski used a whale as a ramp and jumped off of it. Those are the kind of horror stories that are really tragic and people doing stuff like that ruin the experience for everybody. It’s going to hurt the animals and scare them away.”

He suggests that if you see a whale, put your engine in neutral if you are within 100 yards or 300 feet of the creature. He also reminded boaters that it is illegal to feed them and put chum in the water hoping they will come to your boat. “You could drive next to them and hit their head,” said Smith. “People don’t understand that that they aren’t just that little spot you see – they are huge.”

April O. House, a Cabrillo Whale watching naturalist and Sea Shepherd Conservation Society volunteer, also cautions that the plastic bags, packaging and other plastic items we purchase, use and toss out don’t always make it into recycling and whales and other marine life have been found with those types of things in their stomachs.

Although the recent interaction with the adult gray whale was unusual, it isn’t unheard of, and killer whales are not typically graphic creatures. In fact, “orca” is becoming more commonly used for this species than the traditional name, “killer whale.”

“People get the idea of killer whale as a people and whale killer,” Schulman-Janiger explained. “They don’t kill people and they don’t all kill whales… it’s an undeserved reputation. They are very good predators, but people see a killer whale and think, ‘It’s going to kill me!’ It’s never happened. They have never killed or harmed a person purposefully in the wild.” Although transient killer whales specialize in marine mammal prey, other types specialize in fish, and never harm marine mammals.

However, even though killer whales have never harmed a human in the wild, humans have seen killer whales do astonishing things to other animals, mainly and most frequently, the sea lion.

“Every day [when the orcas were seen in the Santa Monica Bay] they were documented eating sea lions,” said Schulman-Janiger. “They are the only predator besides the great white shark that eats them.”

Although killer whales don’t prey on adult whales, they do go after juvenile gray whales, especially when they make their way to the Arctic on their first trip north with their mothers.

Recently, local whale-watchers have spotted orcas playing with sea lions – batting them back and forth in the water and the air – after causing an apparently gruesome death. The truth, according to Schulman-Janiger, isn’t that they are torturing the sea lions (or dolphins, which have also been the object of such orca behavior); instead, they are teaching their juveniles hunting techniques in a controlled environment when the prey is unable to fight back. They often carry around the animal for long periods of time, encouraging the juveniles to practice the techniques that the adults use to hunt.

This season has already seen a record number of southbound gray whales, up to 308 from 154 last year. Daily there can be anywhere from 10 to 27 whales crossing the Redondo Canyon on their way to Baja California. Researchers estimate the high number of grays can be attributed to an earlier southbound migration season; some may also be migrating closer to shore. Researchers also think it will be a banner year for calves and suggest that quite a few of the whales are pregnant following two consecutive outstanding feeding seasons in the Arctic. This is good news for gray whale populations that have been both on and off the Endangered Species list in recent years.

But the occasional presence of calves on the southbound journey also is a somewhat troubling indicator on another front.

Marine Migrants- Orcas and Grays face off from Easy Reader News on Vimeo.

“It was originally thought that gray whales gave birth to their young only in the warm waters of Baja California, but [with global warming] in the last 15 years that has changed,” said Diane Alps, Cabrillo Whalewatch, President of the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Cetacean Society. According to Alps, because of the receding ice coverage, the whales are being forced further north during their feeding season. The whales head south at the same time they always have, but because they are forced to swim longer distances, they often give birth before reaching their destination.

Still, the species is at present bouncing back and moving through the RedondoCanyonin record numbers. People aboard the Voyager and other vessels have been lucky enough to spot the grays as well as smaller whales and dolphins almost every day in recent weeks and possibly until the end of May. Orcas continue to be seen inSanta Monica Bay, where a pod of seven was spotted earlier this week.

“I would think and hope we have not seen the last of them,” said Schulman-Janiger.

Taylor Hall, 5, and her grandparents Joyce and Steve Stepanek and brother Mason were on theVoyager and spotted their first gray whale last Friday. “It was cool,” said Hall. “I haven’t seen whales before.”

Added her grandmother Joyce, “I thought it would be a fun day-outing and a different experience. It’s been an adventure.”

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The “Voyager” departs daily for  for a 2 1/2 – 3 hour cruise in search of these 100′ long, giants of the sea.

New departing schedule:

Weekdays – one trip departing at 12 noon 

Weekends – 2 trips departing at 9am and 12:30 pm

The double-decker seating offers the best views of the coastline and for whale sightings. Each whale watch adventure is narrated by a trained Naturalist of the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium/American Cetacean Society who share their local knowledge of marine wildlife, coastline scenery and history. We are proud to say that we donate a portion of all ticket sales to CMA/ACS (which was founded in 1967, being the oldest whale conservation group in the world). With a high percent whale-sighting success rate, visitors are likely to spot the magnificent Blue Whales as well as Fin, Sperm, Minke and Humpback whales, along with other wildlife thriving off the Southern California Coast including sharks, various species of seabirds, such as the majestic pelicans, graceful terns, and other ocean dwellers such as Mola Mola, as well as playful dolphins, seals, sea lions and flying fish. The “Voyager” whale watching cruise offers an unparalleled opportunity to sight, photograph, and learn about whales and other creatures of the sea. Have a wonderful time on the water, sit back, relax, and breathe the fresh air. Wear rubber soled shoes and bring a warm jacket; even on sunny days, it can feel cool on the water. School, group and private charter rates are available. Please visit our website for more information and detailed directions at voyagerexcursions.com.                   

 Reservations required. Minimum of 12 full fares needed to run.

Video about blue whales

 

Whale Watching December through April

Get a chance to see a variety of whales as well as dolphins, sea lions and marine birds.
You must call for reservations as we need a minimum of 10 passengers to run.
Call 310-944-1219 For Info & Reservations

Departs 7 days a week

Trips depart at 10:00am and 1:30pm
(minimum 12 full fares to run)

Weekday trips (Mon-Fri)

$15 for adults and $10 for children under 12 yrs. 5 yrs. and under ride FREE

Weekend trips (Sat-Sun)

$25 for adults and $15 for children under 12 yrs. 5 yrs. and under ride FREE

Call 310-944-1219 For Info & Reservations

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Boat Rides – May through October

Weekends and Holidays Only – 45 minute Boat Rides run from 1pm until sunset

$10 for adults and $5 for children under 12 yrs. 3 yrs. and under ride FREE
$8 for Seniors and Military with valid ID

A female killer whale and what appeared to be her calf were spotted off the South Bay coast last Saturday. Photo by She Nebrida.

Voyager skipper Brad Sawyer was just pulling out of his vessel’s slip with a full load of 144 school kids Saturday afternoon when he received an ecstatic call. Some very rare visitors had shown up nearby – a pod of Orcas, or killer whales, had just been spotted only a half mile outside of King Harbor.

“The orcas were swimming in a circle,” Sawyer said. “When they do that, it generally means they are feeding on something.”

Sawyer hightailed it due west. Just as the Voyager caught up with the whales, they began heading further west. Sawyer followed for about four miles – off the Manhattan Beach/El Segundo coast – then saw a strange sight: a pod of about 300 common dolphins swimming toward his boat, followed by an alpha male Orca breaching and diving right behind the line of dolphins.

The dolphins, in an understandable state of panic, took off en masse in the opposite direction, towards Marina del Rey.

“Dolphins swim up to 30 miles per hour, and believe me, they were swimming 30 miles per hour – they wanted out of there,” Sawyer said. “We haven’t had Orcas around here in so many years, and they don’t have any predators, so [the dolphins] were like, ‘Holy [expletive deleted], what is going on here?’ Those things were moving.”

A sheen of blood and dolphin oil came to the surface of the water. It appeared that there were four killer whales – the alpha male, two females, and a young calf. The male was leading the hunt and had captured its quarry.

“He is the one that actually did the killing,” Sawyer said. “The other ones just helped drown the dolphin. When they are swimming, they blow, but these guys were blowing like you have never seen, just taking big breaths and diving down, taking turns keeping that dolphin down ‘til he drowned…Then they started eating him.”

Divers Phil Garner and Merry Passage were in a nearby skiff watching the scene unfold when they noticed something bobbing in the water. They scooped what appeared to be a ball into a net to see what it was. Passage, a former research biologist, realized immediately what they’d found.

“She said, ‘No, no, that’s a heart and lungs,’” Garner recalled. “It was a really large heart – the orcas had killed a common dolphin, and that was all that was left of it.”

As they dropped it back in the water, the baby whale – which Garner thought looked almost like a newborn, maybe 5 feet long – swam up alongside it.

Sawyer said the young whale seemed to be playing with it. “That little kid, or baby whale, started throwing it around like a basketball,” he said.

“I think it’s pretty much what they do at that age – play, eat, and sleep,” Garner said.

[flashvideo file=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ezN5CNPx7A /]

Male orcas typically range from 20 to 26 ft. and weight six tons; females range from 16 to 23 ft. and weigh three to four tons. Females are thought to breed roughly every five years until age 40 and on average raise five offspring. The lifespan of wild females averages 50 years, with a maximum of about 90 years. Males live around 29 years on average, with a maximum of about 60 years. Scientists believe both the male and females care for the young.

Sawyer said the older whales seemed to be teaching the young whale.

“Obviously, they have to eat, but I think this was more of a training mission – they were teaching the calf how to hunt,” he said. “Of course, then a bunch of seals swooped in to peck at parts and pieces here and there. It was funny, because we were just idling in neutral, and usually seals stay away from us, but we had a pod of eight sea lions just hugging the side of the boat, using the boat for cover. If I had the gate open, I think they would have jumped on.”

Orcas, who are actually a member of the dolphin family, are known for their cooperative hunting.

Alisa Shulman-Janiger, the director of the American Cetacean Society’s L.A. Chapter Gray Whale Census and Behavior project, has also co-authored a book on killer whales and has led the California Killer Whale Project for almost two decades. By looking at photos of the sighting, she was able to identify the pod of whales – one of the females, in particular, is known as CA-49 and is part of a transient killer whale population that specializes in hunting mammals.

CA-49, Schulman-Janiger said, was first spotted off of Monterey in 1992.

“This particular female, I saw her in 1999 when she had a new calf, and she had another calf in 2005, who I think is with her now,” Schulman-Janiger said. “That little tiny calf I think might be hers. So she has either two or three kids.”

Schulman-Janiger said that so-called “resident” populations of killer whales off British Columbia, Washington, and Mexico tend to mostly eat fish, squid, and sharks, whereas this transient population appears to range from Monterey to the Channel Islands and occasionally further south and targets dolphins, sea lions, and gray whale calves. They are known particularly for forming a gauntlet of sorts near Monterey every spring, when gray whale cow-calf pairs make their northern migration back towards the arctic from Mexico, where mothers birth and raise their young in safe lagoons. The orcas work together to separate calves from their mothers.

Schulman-Janiger said the whales seem to have a common culture of a sort. The resident whales, for example, tend to be loud and boisterous, but the transient whales are very quiet – in keeping with their hunting habits – until after a kill, when they tend to sing and celebrate loudly. The small pods are usually grouped around a mother, her oldest son, and her daughters. CA-49 appears to be hunting with her family, Shulman-Janiger said, and has previously been spotted off Monterey hunting gray whales.

“She is the matriarch,” she said. “They are just doing what they need to do – feeding their kids and taking care of them.”

Schulman-Janiger said CA-49 and her pod turned up near Long Beach about a month ago. Sawyer said he had not personally seen orcas in local waters since 1989. But he said lobster fisherman spotted a pod off Point Vicente – off Palos Verdes – also about a month ago.

It’s been an unusual whale watching year. Another rare visitor – blue whales – turned up in large numbers just outside Redondo Beach this fall. Sawyer said unusually large numbers of bottlenose dolphins and the very rare Risso’s dolphins have been seen frequently from the Voyager over the last month.

But nothing topped the show Sawyer witnessed last Saturday afternoon.

“I tell you, it was a sight to see,” he said. “Beats any National Geographic special you’ll ever see.”

The kids aboard the Voyager were likewise thrilled, if a little taken aback by the gore of the spectacle.

“It was ironic – of all days, we had 144 aboard, the maximum we can carry, and it was a school group,” Sawyer said. “The bad part was they were from Del Amo Elementary, and the name of their mascot is the Dolphins. So of all things….”

Link to original Easy Reader article here

For daily information on whale sightings, or to volunteer, see acs-la.org (click on ‘census’) For more information on the Voyager, see voyagerexcursions.com. Also, for photos of the orcas and video (shot by Merry Passage) see easyreadernews.com. ER

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Voyager Excursions Featured on KABC 7 News – See segment below!

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Check out this recent home video of the Blue Whales below!

[stream provider=youtube flv=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dkd9R8bd5_MM img=x:/img.youtube.com/vi/kd9R8bd5_MM/0.jpg embed=false share=false width=480 height=336 dock=true controlbar=over bandwidth=high autostart=false /]

Giant blue whales showing in record numbers

Daily Breeze - Link to original article – Giant blue whales showing in record numbers By Sandy Mazza Staff Writer Posted: 08/31/2010 06:23:26 AM

Large numbers of blue whales have been spotted off the coast this summer feeding during their migration. Swells of calorie-rich planktonic krill have attracted more giant blue whales off the Palos Verdes Peninsula than local whale watchers can ever remember.

Since last week, onlookers have been treated to a virtual whale playground. As many as 25 giants at once have been spotted from shore in recent days.

This is extraordinary, considering that only 2,000 blue whales have been documented in the north Pacific Ocean.

The blue whales’ massive smooth backs, geyseral blows, and spade-like flukes have rushed the heartbeats of those who have witnessed the largest mammals ever known to inhabit Earth.
“So little is known about whales, so when you get to see this brief glimpse of them it’s really thrilling and quite a treat,” said Diane Alps, program coordinator at Cabrillo Marine Aquarium. “We’re seeing a whale that’s relatively rare and hard to see.”

Smaller gray whales are commonly spotted near these shores in the winter, as they migrate annually from the cold Bering and Chukchi seas to Mexican lagoons to give birth.

But blue whales have only been seen regularly in the past five years. And, before last week, just one or two could be found at a time.

On Sunday, about 100 people crowded onto a San Pedro yacht to search for the whales. Within a mile of shore, 18 blue whales and three fin whales – the second largest mammals on Earth – were seen that afternoon. Whales circled the boat and other smaller sailboats that stopped to enjoy the spectacle of the gorging goliaths.
Dan Salas, owner of the Long Beach-based whale-watching catamaran The Christopher, said the abundance of blues on his twice-daily tours has been “incredible.”

“We are seeing the most incredible show of nature that we’ve ever seen,” Salas said. “There are at least 40 to 50 blue whales in our range, from the Santa Monica Bay down to the Huntington Beach oil rigs.”

Experts believe a large amount of krill – tiny, shrimp-like creatures and, ironically, some of the smallest animals on the planet – are prospering in the area because of wind-generated upwelling that forces cooler water to the surface. Krill thrive in cool water, and blue whales need to eat about 4,000 pounds of krill a day to sustain their 100-ton girth.

To feed, the whales open their enormous mouths, take a huge gulp, and then sift out the water through broom-like plates hanging from their upper jaw in place of teeth. Then, they swallow the remaining crustaceans. Pleated grooves on their throats allow them to take larger mouthfuls.

With each whale sighting, onlookers on Sunday gasped or cheered. Alps, an expert in marine life, answered excited questions about the mysterious activities of blue whales. The attraction people feel for our ocean-dwelling counterparts is tangible, she said.
“People are drawn to whales,” Alps said. “I think it has a lot do with with us both being mammals. They’re similar to us in so many ways, but they live in water.”

Alps, who warned boaters to stay at least 100 yards from whales and to turn off their engines when whales are nearby, said no one knows how long the blues will be visiting.

“It literally could end tomorrow,” she said. “I wonder why (we have so many this year) but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

Coming in for the Krill

Redondo Beach Patch – Link to original article Coming in for the Krill  By Ed Pilolla September 15, 2010

Cooler weather has drawn blue whales closer to the Redondo coast than usual as they search for food. Cooler than usual temperatures might not have thrilled beach-goers this summer but it appears to have brought dozens of blue whales closer to shore than at any time anyone can remember.

“We’ve never had the blue whales come into Santa Monica Bay like they are now,” said Natalie Massey, a longtime whale naturalist and volunteer with the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium. “This is the first time we’ve had the blue whales come in such great numbers. It’s been just amazing.”

The blue whales are feeding on their main source of food, krill, in Redondo Canyon, just south of Redondo Pier about a mile off the coast.

It’s not unusual for blue whales to be seen off the coast of Santa Barbara near the Channel Islands, or between Long Beach and Catalina Island during the summer. What is unusual is for blue whales to congregate so close to South Bay shores. Although fin whales are often seen feeding on krill in Redondo Canyon, the sight of dozens of the largest animal on the planet just a mile off the shore is unprecedented, whale watchers say. The whales are close enough to shore for adventuresome stand-up paddleboarders to reach out and nearly touch them as they surface.

Massey said a few blue whales ventured this close to shore in 2004, but nothing near the 20-30 that can routinely be seen these days in Redondo Canyon.

“This is the first time we’ve been able to come out of Redondo Beach and get on whales right away, like as soon as we get out of the harbor,” said Massey, who volunteers as a guide aboard a local pleasure cruise boat.

Members of a local outrigger canoe team said when they paddled outside the harbor to practice one day last week, blue whales surfaced right next to their boat, which has never happened before—and the canoe club has been around for 40 years.

Cindy Day, a Redondo Beach resident who has been going on whale watching tours every year for the past 10 years, said this summer’s tour was totally different from the others she has taken.

“There are so many more whales,” Day said.

And people want to see them. Craig Stanton of Voyager Nature Cruises said some of this weekend’s tours are already booked solid and so he is considering adding more.

Massey said the most common theory as to why the whales are here is that the water is so cold that the krill, shrimp-like invertebrates, are staying close to the surface. The windy weather may have pushed the krill farther into the Santa Monica Bay than usual, she said.

The whales are expected to continue feeding through October and possibly November. After that, they will head south to warmer waters near Costa Rica, where they mate.

After harpoon attacks nearly wiped out the species, the International Whaling Commission banned all hunting of blue whales in 1966. Only within the last few years has there been evidence that the numbers of the blue whales may be increasing. There are between 7,000 and 14,000 blue whales in the world, according to the American Cetacean Society.

Blue whales can grow up to 100 feet long and weigh as much as 150 tons.

Although the whales are now in Redondo Canyon, some can still be found near Santa Barbara and even Monterey, Massey said.

Will they return next year? Who knows. In past years, the tour boats have had to travel for an hour out to sea before spotting blue whales, and never encountered them in the numbers they have seen this year, whale naturalists said.

“We love having them here,” Massey said. “They’re such beautiful animals and they’re so much fun to watch.”

More to Sea

Redondo Beach Marina — September 16, 2010

The marina has come alive with a buzz in the air. The reason for the excitement is whales. Blue whales, minke whales, humpback whales, and finback whales are everywhere. It looks like a congregation of krill feeding creatures has taken over the ocean. Along with that come some incredible photo opportunities. We have had two news crews on our boats recently. Yesterday a cameraman from a major television station made the comment that he has been in the business for 30 years. He got the best footage ever with us. Over his career I am sure he has been at the scenes of some very interesting and important events. One can become jaded or uninterested dealing with that every day. You should have seen the smile on his face and wide-eyed expression from that veteran news photographer.

It is interesting watching the people getting on the boats. Most are somewhat excited and unsure what to expect. Some are very anxious. Many have been on whale watching trips for years. Some are there because their significant other drug them along. Watching everybody’s reactions on the water is fun. Virtually everyone on board from passengers to the veteran boat crews react with growing excitement and enthusiasm.  Seeing them in the distance creates a buzz in the air. The anticipation builds as we approach a spouting whale. Most times the blues travel in pairs, so we approach two at a time. As we get closer, the whales seem to know why we are there. They show us their backs, fins, and sometimes their flukes (tails). Seeing the first fluke always stirs the crowd. Those who were drug along for the ride suddenly come alive. The closer we get, the more electricity builds in the air. The whales do not always cooperate by staying close or on the surface. Seeing a full-blown fluke come completely out of the water is awesome, but it also means that most of the time the whale is making a deep dive. They might stay down for several minutes and travel quite a distance. That means that we have to go to the next pair, off in the distance.

With the vast number of whales nearby, it is not too long and we are approaching another pair. Wait there is another pair over here, more over there, and so goes the day. As we move around, more spouts are everywhere. Even more enthusiasm is building, as off in the distance a whale comes almost all the way out of the water. Another is lunge feeding across the surface. Everyone on board is experiencing a once in a lifetime event. Once there are sufficient numbers of whales around the boat, it is time to shut down and just watch. There are many areas where just sitting silent in the water results in several whales all around the boat. They come up getting a closer look at us. The sound created when the whale breathes and blows water vapor into the air adds to the experience. It becomes more that just a visual event as the sound enhances what we are seeing. The boat comes alive even more getting that first up close and personal look at the largest creature on earth. But that is nothing compared to when finally a blue comes close to the boat, mouth open, fin out of the water, crashing the surface while lunge feeding. The boat explodes in laughter, screaming, cheering, shouting, and overall pandemonium. This probably sounds like the ultimate whale watchers dream that is too good to be true. Until the last two weeks, it probably was. But that is exactly what is going on every day right now.

Watching the people get off the boats is interesting. Everybody has a huge smile on his or her face. It is like they were transformed while on the water. No matter what was going on in their lives three hours ago, the whales brought something that is hard to describe. It is that good. For more information call 310 944-1219.

In addition to the whale excitement, another popular event is coming to the marina. The 15th annual Lobster Festival will be held on  September 24, 25, & 26 at the Seaside Lagoon. There will be live music all three days. Radio station KLOS will be on scene on Saturday. For more information visit www.lobsterfestival.com.

With all that is going we are still fishing. The boats have taken to the rock fish mode recently as the water has cooled. What could liven things up would be another batch of squid coming in. Word is that the guys are going looking tonight. If they score on the squid, things could perk up quickly. Lets see how the squid expedition does. If there is a white sea bass in the counts in the next day or two, it is a pretty good indication that they found the candy bait. For more information on fishing call Redondo Sportfishing at 310 372-2111 ext. 4.

Thank you for visiting the Redondo Beach Marina, please tell your friends and family about us.

From the Easy Reader – Link to original article Blue wonder

Local biologists, whale watchers, paddlers and boaters are experiencing a rare up-close look at the world’s largest animal

Craig Stanton was sitting on the deck of his condo overlooking King Harbor in Redondo Beach a little more than two weeks ago when something in the ocean caught his eye.

A white plume rose from the blue water not far from the harbor’s entrance. Stanton, a 100-ton captain and longtime harbor hand, was puzzled. He thought it must be the exhaust from a vessel. But no ship was in sight. He grabbed his binoculars and looked again. What he saw made his jaw drop: in just seconds, he saw eight spouts blowing sky high less than a mile away.

“Oh my god,” he said, putting the binoculars down and grabbing his phone. “Time to call the boys.”

The largest animals in the history of the Earth had arrived. Blue whales, as long as 110 ft. and weighing up to 200 tons, are not unknown in local waters. They frequently summer in the Santa Barbara Channel and sometimes a scattered few can be found off the coast of Palos Verdes. But never in living memory had a group of blues arrived here in these numbers or in this manner.

Stanton earlier this year was one of four local skippers who purchased the Voyager, a 65 ft. passenger boat purpose-built for this harbor. It has become known as the South Bay’s preeminent whale watching vessel. Whale watching in these waters, however, usually begins in late December and follows gray whale migrations. Stanton called his fellow skippers. Something strange and unusual was happening, he told them. It was time to launch the Voyager.

On that Saturday the Voyager set out from King Harbor on a voyage unlike any before in its 50 years exploring local waters. More than 20 naturalists from the Cabrillo Whale Watch program were on board. The excitement was palpable as the 65 ft. vessel cut through the fog and left the Redondo breakwater.

Diane Alps, a program coordinator at the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium who also serves as a volunteer naturalist for the whale watch program on board the Voyager, spoke on the ship’s intercom. She said blue whales are often heard before they are seen – the steep exhale of a blue can be heard from hundreds of yards away – but visible signs might also appear on the water.

“We are looking for fins and tails,” she said. “We are looking for any disturbance.”

A whale watching trip is an exercise in hope, wonder, and luck. Stanton formerly served as a charter boat captain in Mexico. He would take groups hundreds of miles up the Sea of Cortez in hopes of just a few glimpses of the mighty blue whales. After buying the Voyager, the new ownership hired another local captain to operate the boat day-to-day  – Brad Sawyer, who during last year’s whale season logged a 98 percent success rate in finding whales on each trip (75 percent is considered a good rate).

“He’s got that fish sense,” Stanton said, noting that Sawyer’s experience as a former fisherman was invaluable. “It’s not something you learn out of a book.”

Sawyer was looking for current breaks and the telltale slicks on the water’s surface known as “flukeprints” – a flattening of the water that the movement of the blue whale’s massive tail creates when it kicks just below the surface.

He was also looking for so-called “whale birds,” a species called phalaropes that feed on the same crustacean – tiny shrimplike creatures known as krill – that form the bulk of a blue whale’s 8,000 pound, 1.5 million daily calorie intake.

“Bird life is really key,” Sawyer said.

And make no mistake: the whales are here for the krill. Some of the same conditions that had made for the uncharacteristically cool “bummer summer” also helped foster a rich krill bloom locally. Strong offshore winds created an upwelling, bringing cold water to the surface, particularly along the edges of the underwater Redondo Canyon that extends straight off Redondo.

Sawyer patrolled the canyon. A few miles outside the harbor a very large breath was heard. “3 o’clock!” one of the naturalists exclaimed. Everybody moved to the starboard side of the boat and saw an 80 ft. blue whale surfacing. Another surfaced right beside it.

Blue whales often travel in pairs. Another on-board naturalist – Bernardo Alps, the president of the American Cetacean Society’s LA chapter (who met his future wife Diane while whale watching in 1999) – noted that the male is nearly always to the rear of the female and is known to keep close proximity to her prior to breeding season.

“It is related to mating,” Alps said. “The male will stay with her weeks or months in anticipation of being able to mate.”

Soon somebody shouted “12 o’clock” and shortly thereafter “6 o’clock.” Two pairs of whales were right in front and behind the boat. They were feeding below the surface, rather than “lunge feeding” with open mouths along the surface. This meant that they frequently dove. In the course of the next 90 minutes, everybody on board the Voyager was treated to among the most impressive of whale watching sights – particularly for photographers – when the blue whale raises its flukes out of the water before kicking downward in a dive.

During the course of a three hour trip, the Voyager encountered seven flukes.

Stanton was amazed. In a decade of working whale watch boats, he’d never seen anything like it.

“This is phenomenal,” he said. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. This is just whale watching at its finest.”

What he could not have fathomed is that over the course of the next two weeks, as the Voyager began daily and sometimes twice a day trips, this would be the fewest whales it would encounter. One day last week the vessel found itself surrounded by more than 30 blue whales off the coast of Palos Verdes. All totaled, somewhere between 50 and 80 blue whales have arrived off the coast of the South Bay. It has created such a stir that a crew from the CBS Nightly News arrived to film the phenomenon.

Diane Alps said the network of whale watchers up and down the coast is abuzz with news of the congregation of blue whales that is occurring here.

“We’ve got a lot of blue whale out there right now,” Diane Alps said. “This is definitely where it is happening.”

The question is why. The short answer is krill. But in a larger sense, nobody entirely knows.

Despite the fascination human beings have with blue whales, they are among the least understood animals on our planet. Biologists believe, for example, that they live between 30 to 50 years, but even this is uncertain. Some believe a blue whale can live to be 100. A persistence of mystery surrounds the lives of these whales

The whales that are currently visiting this coast are known as the Eastern North Pacific population and are believed to number somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 animals out of a worldwide population of 10,000 to 15,000. These whales mainly migrate between winter breeding areas off Mexico and Costa Rica and summer feeding off California, Oregon, sometimes even British Columbia and, more rarely, the Gulf of Alaska. Up until just a few decades ago, it wasn’t even understood how separate this population was from another population further north and west in the Pacific. The two populations, marine biologists have discovered, differ in size, range, and in the songs they sing.

And it is in the area of song that the mysteries of the blue whale deepen.

Male blue whales are magnificent singers, and such a description is not simply anthropomorphic. (Female blues do not sing.) They produce a profoundly deep-throated, structured sound that has both similar intent to our own songs – seeking a mate – and appears to be somewhat cooperatively constructed. Blue whale songs are projected so powerfully that they can be heard by other whales 1,000 to 1,600 miles away. This much has been understood for decades, but over the past few years scientists have made a series of startling discoveries. Each population of whales not only has a distinct song – at least ten different song types globally – but they change their song, together, each year.

“They do put a lot of effort into synchronizing and it’s amazing,” said Dr. John Hildebrand of the Scripps Institute for Oceanography, one of the pioneers in the study of blue whale song. “It means the frequency they put out isn’t just relative to body size, because all the different body sizes, young animals as well as older animals – if you look at how they are synchronizing, they must be listening to each other, and mimicking.”

A paper published last month in the Acoustical Society of America by a team of researchers from San Francisco State University analyzed recordings of 4,378 blue whale songs recorded off the California coast. The whale songs are sung in two parts – an initial pulse, called the A call, and a long, sonorous moan called the B call. The scientists found that the whales were producing the B call at almost the identical pitch – 16.02 Hz, exactly four octaves below a middle C – with a variation of only a half percent in pitch (the difference between C and C sharp, by comparison, is 6 percent) among whales.

Hildebrand said the collective changes in songs are particularly significant.

“So there must be some process, ‘Oh, gee, that guy is singing at that pitch, I better follow him and sing at that pitch,’” he said. “And it happens every year – every year there is sort of a consistent song. That is blue whale culture. They have an agreed upon song from year to year.”

Hildebrand’s team last year made an equally shocking discovery. They listened to thousands of blue whale recordings, beginning with the first made, by the U.S. Navy in the 1960s and including the extensive recordings they have made with their own marine acoustic listening stations since the 1990s and other recordings that have been made around the world over the last 30 years. The scientists found that whales throughout the planet have been lowering the pitch of their songs year by year. The whales are singing deeper in what appears to be a systematic fashion. The Eastern North Pacific blue whales have deepened the sound of their songs by 31 percent over the past four decades; other blue whale populations, though less studied, have likewise lowered the pitch and sound frequency of their songs.

“It took a while for us to come to grips that it was real,” Hildebrand said. “We discovered each year they lowered the pitch…After a couple years we were like, ‘What is going on out there?’ Every year it was a little bit lower. Then we went back and looked at the Navy data and indeed found it had been a slow steady push downward for over 40 years.”

Nobody could say definitively why this was happening. One hypothesis was that it had to do with the increasing ambient noise in the oceans, but this was illogical – if the whales were struggling to hear each other, it would seem to be more effective to raise their voices, not lower them. They are actually singing somewhat more quietly.

Hildebrand thinks the reason the whales have dropped their voices may be the oldest in creation: it’s sexier. Male blue whales are singing lower, he believes, because it is more impressive to females and increases their chances to mate. It is sexual selection at work – a lower-pitched song indicates a bigger, more impressive male – think Barry White style seduction – and is thereby more attractive to females.

This line of reasoning, if correct, may also be partly related to why the blue whales are here now. Hildebrand thinks that perhaps whales are naturally inclined to sing lower but have only been able to do so as their numbers have increased. They can sing more quietly and impressively now, in other words, because there are more animals and their songs don’t have to travel as far.

Hildebrand argues that this fits the timeline – whaling was only outlawed in 1966, and up until that time there was still an active whaling station as close as Long Beach. Globally, more than 360,000 blue whales were slaughtered in the first six decades of the 1900s, decimating the worldwide population by an estimated 90 percent. The historic population of Eastern North Pacific blue whales was believed to be more than 10,000. By the time of the whaling ban, some believe their numbers were less than 1,000.

Whatever the cause for their presence here, Hildebrand said that the blue whales in California are singing right now. As they prepare to head south for warmer climes this winter, the males are extremely intent on finding a mate.

“They can sing for hours, maybe even days on end,” Hildebrand said.

The animals even have a trick of being able to come to the surface and breathe without disrupting their song, Hildebrand said, almost like an opera singer. Though the songs are not easily discernable to human ears – blue whales sing at a frequency near the bottom of the range of our hearing – scientists with acoustic equipment are hearing a proliferation of blue whale song.

“This is a good time,” Hildebrand said. “This is the beginning of the season, sort of, when they may be pairing up. They use the opportunity here, singing to find a mate, then they will stick with her however long they need to into the breeding season. It’s almost a peak time in singing – maybe it helps to ask her out early if you are going to go to the prom.”

Probably nobody alive has spent more time among the blue whales of California than John Calambokidis.

As the founder of the Cascadia Research Collective, in Olympia, Washington, Calambokidis came to California in 1986 to study humpback whales. He encountered a surprising number of blues and took the opportunity to investigate. At the time, almost nothing was known of the blue whale population here – nobody, Calambokidis recalled, had any idea that this was the largest remaining group of blue whales left in the world.

“When we started in the mid 1980s, there was very little known about them,” Calambokidis said.

He proceeded to document the population. One of the initial mysteries he investigated was how the whales shifted the areas in which they fed. At times, they would range up to British Columbia and Alaska; other times they would stay in California. Some whales go both places in a single feeding season. Though blue whales travel only three or four miles per hour while feeding, they can do so 24 hours a day and therefore cover nearly 1,000 miles in ten days.

With the help of local biologists – including Eric Martin, the co-director of the Roundhouse Aquarium in Manhattan Beach – Calambokidis tracks individual blue whale movements through photo identification. One whale last year ranged from British Columbia to Santa Barbara in less than a month.

“I think these animals generally are shifting around a fair amount to take advantage of krill abundance,” Calambokidis said. “So the fact that they are showing up [near Redondo] now is not in itself unusual. When it occurs in heavily populated areas like off Redondo, LA, and Santa Monica Bay, it maybe gets a little more attention.”

The whales who have fed near the Redondo harbor have received a deluge of attention. They are an irresistible source of curiosity for local watermen, who can now paddle out of the harbor and encounter the largest animal in the history of the world. The largest blue whales are twice the tonnage of the closest dinosaur, and by National Geographic’s calculations weigh as much as the entire National Football League combined. Their hearts weigh 1,200 pounds alone; even a baby blue whale is 24 ft. long and comes into the world weighing 3 tons, then quickly adds 200 pounds a day from their mother’s milk.

Gene “Tarzan” Smith took up standup paddling only three years ago after suffering a ski injury. His friend Laird Hamilton, the professional surfer, introduced him to paddling and he now paddles every day. He paddled out to the whales 12 days in a row. The more he has been around the animals, he said, the more they seem to have grown comfortable. A whale has approached his board so close that he touched it (rather than use his paddle) and last week a whale flipped on its side and looked at him, eyeball to eyeball.

“They have gotten more friendly, more tame, I think – more use to people being up there,” Smith said. “One day one came up to me and swam on its side and it looked at me and its fin came up and it kind of brushed my board…The only thing is if that tail came up and hit you, these things weigh 100 tons or whatever. It’s like an 18-wheel truck barreling along with two fuel tanks. It’s just gigantic. It’s pretty thrilling, but you want to be careful.”

Some of his friends in the paddleboarding community – a local group that trains together and is dubbed “The Donkeys” – have taken to calling Smith “the whale whisperer.” Last Friday, the Donkeys went with him and visited the whales. Paddleboarder Jeff Cohn said the whales seemed as curious about humans as the humans were about them.

“It felt like they were really smart, the way they travelled around you,” Cohn said. “We were out there about an hour and when we came back to the beach they followed us in, almost circling us, like they didn’t want us to leave…Right as we were leaving one came up on its side and a fin came up and it kind of waved. They just seemed so gentle and so curious.”

“They are so big, so massive, it’s a little scary because you are just kind of at their mercy,” Cohn added. “Lucky none were breaching. The other thing was just seeing all the water they displaced when they move, and the sound of their breathing….When you get a whiff downwind of their breath when they blow, you get kind of a rotten fish smell. It’s amazing. It stinks, but it’s pretty surreal.”

Eric Martin, from the Roundhouse Aquarium, had an interesting encounter with a blue off Marina del Rey. He and his son were in their 18-ft. boat when a lunge-feeding whale surfaced nearby, holding open its mouth and exposing its baleen (a filter-like structure made of the same material as fingernails) and sucking in krill. The whale subsequently approached the boat, pressing krill against it in order to better contain its catch.

“We had the boat turned off and we see this krill just dancing at the surface, like water boiling,” Martin said. “We were like, ‘Oh my god, what is happening’ and a whale came up to us. It could get more krill by using us to compress it. They used our boat as a tool. It was amazing.”

Not all the encounters have been so pacific. Craig Stanton, from the Voyager, said the frenzy around the group outside the Redondo harbor has gotten to the point that the whales are sometimes being molested. Witnesses reported seeing a man on a jet ski race up to a blue whale earlier this week and use its back to “get air” and whoop in celebration afterwards.

“That is just ridiculously stupid,” Stanton said. “There is a safe distance to keep from these things, and they are affected by boat traffic. They are big and lumbering, and they are trying to feed, so we need to let them be, a little bit.”

They are also still endangered species. Legally, people are required to stay at a 100-yard remove from the animals, although the whales will sometimes themselves approach closer. Because of their size, blue whales have likely not developed a fear of boats. In 2007, four were killed in the shipping lanes in the Santa Barbara Channel. Their only known predators are killer whales.

Calambokidis said that he did a study using suction cup tags in order to observe how the whales behave as ships approach.

“They didn’t seem to react in any way to avoid it,” he said. “In fact, some of the whales seemed to spend more time at the surface when a ship was nearby, making them more vulnerable. This is not a threat they are really evolutionarily equipped to deal with.”

It’s impossible to predict how long the blue whales will be in the South Bay. According to local whale watchers, a smaller number were here last year until early December. So far, the krill abundance still seems strong, and so most observers think that the whales will stay at least through this month.

“There are a lot of krill out here,” said Smith. “Who knows how long they’ll be around. It’s definitely a thrilling South Bay story, no doubt about it. We are blessed that is going on here. It’s pretty cool.” ER

The Voyager is running daily weekday whale watching trips noon to 3 p.m. and twice daily weekend trips beginning at 9 a.m. See www.voyagerexcursions.com or Facebook for more information or call 310-944-1219.

By Mark McDermott September 15th, 2010

From the Beach Reporter – Link to original article A Whale of a Trip

Through dense fog on a chilly Saturday morning, the Voyager set out from the Redondo Beach Marina over Labor Day weekend to give its passengers a thrill – to spot the largest animal known to ever exist on earth, the blue whale.

About an hour into the three-hour trip that goes a few miles off the coast of Point Vicente, out of the steel gray of the ocean, breached the magnificent creature. Those on board let out an audible gasp as more of the whale was exposed and yet another blue whale came up for some air.

The whales have made their home off the coast, at least for a short time, mainly because of the plentiful food source available. The whales had been feeding in the area for “10 days solid,” according to Diane Alps, program coordinator for the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium and a board member of the LA chapter of the American Cetacean Society.

“We’re getting more wind, which creates upwelling (from the deep Redondo Canyon), and it allows the colder waters to come to the surface. This brings nutrients, which is what drives krill production,” said Alps, who was aboard Saturday with her husband, Bernardo, who is the president of the ACS. “We’re seeing so much krill out there. The great thing is we’ve been seeing a lot of krill at the surface, so we’re seeing surface-feeding blue whales and signs of them being concentrated at the surface. They’re not down as long, and they can hold their breath for much longer. A typical blue whale can be down six to nine minutes. When they’re feeding closer to the surface, you don’t have to wait for them that long.”

A number of naturalists were on board not only to witness the unusual concentration of blue whales but to also receive training for the upcoming gray whale watching season, which begins in the winter. Joe Moeller has been a volunteer naturalist for Cabrillo Whalewatch, a joint effort of ACS and the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, for more than four years.

“We’re seeing an extraordinary amount of blue whales and they’re very large, which is a nice combination,” Moeller said. “It’s an unusual, unusual year.”

Going on a whale watching expedition is almost like nature treasure hunting. Seeing any whale is never a guarantee, but this year, although it probably is an exaggeration, blue whales seem as plentiful as dolphins. The Voyager heads to where most of the whales have been sighted. On Saturday, the first sightings seemed to come out of the mist. Once the ship’s crew and its captain, Craig Stanton, got their sights on the whales, the Voyager stopped in anticipation of more friendly visits. More than 300 feet is usually a safe distance, but it also depends on their activity.

“Sometimes they’re out here surface feeding or they’re slowly moving across the surface lying on their side basically with their mouth open,” Stanton said. “We’re supposed to give them safe distance to watch. Sometimes we’ll get groups of two to five whales and we’ll pace alongside them. Sometimes it’s a distance where we’ll actually shut the boat down and you can actually hear them breathe. They exhale and inhale with such volume you can actually hear them from a half mile away sometimes. When they breathe in, it sounds … it has a whistle to it.”

Stanton added, “When they’re feeding like this, it’s a little different than the migratory gray whale, because when they are migrating, they are on a mission, going places. You’re generally chasing them. These whales are basically feeding, going about their way. Sometimes they get oblivious to what’s surrounding them, but they obviously have keen senses to swim right alongside the boat.”

As long as the krill are in abundance, the blue whales are expected to be around through October and maybe even merge into the gray whale migration, which generally begins in December and runs through April.

Those on the recent Voyager excursions have gotten an eyeful, with a multitude of sightings. Flukes (tail) can be seen high in the air as if waving at the ship’s passengers; a loud exhale, which is usually the first sign from a blue whale, can be heard; or maybe they leave their footprint, a disturbance in the shape of a circle on the water’s surface that they leave when they dive. When a fluke was posed for all to see, one passenger yelled, “Thank you, whales.” That pretty much sums up the feelings of many of the passengers on the Voyager…[For more information or to make reservations, call (310) 944-1219]

by Michael Hixon
(Updated: Friday, September 10, 2010 1:24 PM PDT)