Recent Sightings

Lighthouse Lecture Series – Shari Goforth
Event
11/15/2025

As part of the Lighthouse Lecture Series, Shari Goforth will present “Bioacoustics: Sound and Singers in the Sea” on Saturday, November 15, at 4 p.m.

“We will spend this time looking at the importance of sound for marine cetaceans, how they create sound, the difference between song, language, communication, human-made noise, and we will listen to select sounds of whales, dolphins, and creatures of the ocean.”

Shari Goforth has spent her career as a Registered Veterinary Technician, mostly in small companion animal medicine. She not only loved animals growing up, but she was also interested in their biology, behaviors, and conservation. Since moving to the coast nine years ago, she has pursued her passion for understanding whales, photographing them, and submitting photos to databases for identification. She developed her Mendonoma Gray Whale Photo ID Project, taking her first photo in 2018 with basic camera gear. Over time, she invested in high-quality camera equipment and studied settings and techniques to improve photo resolution. Her whale interest-turned-obsession led her to recent travel following gray whales to Monterey Bay, the Oregon coast, and one of the gray whale breeding and birthing lagoons, Laguna San Ignacio, Baja California Sur, Mexico. She has followed bubble-net feeding humpbacks in S.E. Alaska, and has photographed grays, humpbacks, blues, finbacks, and others, including small cetaceans, off the coast of Fort Bragg, CA, adding those photos to databases.

It was a beautiful day at Gerstle Cove. The waves were huge and exploded upon crashing into the rocks. Visibility was excellent.

🔆 9 humpbacks – one duo and 7 singles

🔆 1 red-tailed hawk – dark morph

🔆 5-7 meadowlarks

🔆 22 brown pelicans flying north

Much gratitude to all our amazing Veterans on this day and every day for their dedicated service to our country.

Today was mostly cloudy creating monochrome visibility where blows, sky, and the ocean are all the same whitish color.

✴️ NO WHALES SEEN AT EITHER THE POINT ARENA LIGHTHOUSE PENINSULA OR AT SAUNDERS REEF. ✴️.

AT PAL:

✴️ 10 harbor seals hauled out and 5-6 swimming near the rocks at high tide

✴️ 2 great blue herons

✴️ 1 red-tailed hawk

✴️ 2 American kestrels

✴️ 1 Northern harrier

✴️ 2 black oystercatchers

✴️ 10-12 killdeer

✴️ 23 brown pelicans many diving into the ocean to feed

✴️ 4 flocks of surf scoters flying south

Offshore haziness but decent visibility.

⚛️ NO WHALES SEEN AT THE POINT ARENA LIGHTHOUSE PENINSULA OR AT SAUNDERS REEF ⚛️

AT PAL:

⚛️ At high tide, 6 harbor seals hauled out and resting on the rocks and 5 swimming

⚛️ 7 black oystercatchers

⚛️ 1 great blue heron

⚛️ 12-15 brown pelicans circling the area

⚛️ 3 long strands of surf scoters flying south

Today the ocean was flat calm and visibility was excellent.

AT THE POINT ARENA LIGHTHOUSE PENINSULA:

🔺 NO WHALES SEEN

🔺 7-8 harbor seals bottling and swimming around the rocks at their haul out sites at high tide

🔺 1 black oystercatcher

🔺 1 red-tailed hawk

🔺 1 northern harrier

🔺 3 American kestrels

NO WHALES SEEN AT SAUNDERS REEF

🔺 12-15 brown pelicans diving into the water to feed