TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2024

OBSERVATIONS FROM THE POINT ARENA LIGHTHOUSE PENINSULA:

• 3 humpback whales;  2 moving slowly to the north, one moving south

• 3 harbor seals swimming: their haul out sites covered at high tide

• 1 Northern Harrier

 We then observed from Saunders Reef where the wind was picking up and the surface of the ocean became covered in whitecaps.  No whales seen there.

Shari Goforth and many others had an amazing half-day pelagic trip on Monday, the 7th of October leaving from Noyo Harbor with Captain Richard Thornton of Anchor Charter Boats on the Kraken.  Here is a report of the cetacean species they observed written by Peter Pyle:

Within a half hour we were seeing Sooty, Pink-footed, and Buller’s shearwaters and had noticed whale spouts ahead. As we approached the spouts they became more abundant, and we started debating if they were Fins, Humpbacks, or Blues. It was a bit puzzling, for good reason: it turned out all three species were present and intermingling! On the captain’s fish-finder was a large dense mass of bait fish near the sea floor, which we surmised were Pacific Saury. For over an hour the whales were diving and spouting all around the boat, feeding on this bait mass, cruising hither and yon, and in the case of some Humpbacks, fighting each other in territorial or mate-related dispute, according to the experienced marine-mammal scientists on board. Several times we had all three species within one binocular view, something I had never seen before, and all three came close at times, including two pairs of Blue Whales surfacing and re-surfacing just 50 yards from the boat. Yow. Swirling flocks of shearwaters scurried between feeding whales, Black-footed Albatross came in to investigate, a Minke Whale made a brief appearance, and both White-sided Dolphins and Dall’s Porpoises at times came over to ride the bow in small groups. And all just 3-4 miles from shore!