Fortunately Francesca Sarda, a PhD student from Barcelona University, took these photos of the Blue Whale seen on last Saturday's trip. Thank you Francesca! As of yesterday Blue Whales have been reported north of the Farallon Islands so book a trip with us and bring your camera. 
Before I heard about the bounty seen last weekend I planned on telling you about the unexpected things I actually had recently seen. 
Photographer Ed Estes and I always compare notes after a trip on the unusual things that we’ve seen, for instance the sighting of an injured animal like this Humpback Whale. We report injured animals to The Marine Mammal Center in some instances, and we may consult senior Naturalists such as Carol Keiper and Doreen Gurrola in other cases for insight and information. 
Ed saw this Harbor Seal with some kind of ring (plastic?) seemingly choking it. Unless the seal can be caught and the debris removed, we'll never know if the ring proved fatal. 
Number 95 here has a better story. I called Carol about this California Sea Lion. She told me that the number, placed there with safe haircolor, helps identify the sea lion as part of a study probably being conducted out of Southern California. She assures us that molting will restore the sea lion's pre-95 hair-do. 
Look at the rope (?) mark on this Humpback Whale - in front of the dorsal fin. See the depression it made? How tightly it must have once bound the whale. See blog entry dated December 16, 2006 for a story on disentangling whales from marine debris and you'll get a better understanding of the perils marine mammals face every day. This whale is lucky to have gotten free and to have healed so nicely.
It wasn't until I was home going through the day's photos that I realized that one of the many Humpback Whales I'd seen that day had a serious injury, now healed. Was it from a boat strike? Could that whale possibly be one of the famous off-course whales that had spent many days in the Sacramento River Delta last spring? (See blog dated May 20, 2007.) I sent the photos to Carol and Doreen who passed them along to researchers at Cascadia Research in Olympia, Washington. Researchers were familiar with this whale. Not one of the Delta whales, but nevertheless a known survivor of some unknown accident. I'm glad I didn't miss that. Each trip truly is an adventure.
Photos by Ed Estes and Kathleen Jacques. Text by Kathleen Jacques. Photos of Blue Whales by Francesca Sarda.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
You Never Know What You'll See (or miss)
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
The Ocean Hitchhiker
I almost titled this blog “Kitty Kat Picks up Hitchhiking Tweety Bird”. But I knew I’d never live it down, even though our fantastic new boat really is named Kitty Kat and even though it’s true that last Sunday an off-course song bird saved its own life by hopping aboard the boat more than 30 miles out to sea to hitch a ride back to land. 
We keep telling everyone what a great year it has been, and continues to be, for Humpback Whale sightings, and here we are fussing over a little bird. Read Naturalist Melinda Nakagawa’s account and you’ll see why: 
We had a female Red-winged Blackbird fluttering around our boat, about 5-6 miles south of the island. (The island is 27 miles outside the Golden Gate Bridge!) This poor little land bird looked so exhausted as it fluttered back and forth, dipping close to the waves in our wake as it tried to keep up. Skipper Ronnie slowed the boat down to allow our little friend to hop aboard for a ride to the mainland. 
Since she is a land bird, her feathers are not waterproof so she cannot land on the water like a gull or a murre, and would surely drown at sea if she didn't make it back to solid ground to rest and eat insects. Our stowaway landed on the roof of the cabin and occasionally fluttered around and landed on the deck around the passengers during the ride home. Fortunately our little friend made it the mainland. The last time we saw her we were about 2-3 miles from the Golden Gate bridge.
Strange as it seems that a bird more likely to be seen at your backyard bird feeder was seen near the Farallones, there is plenty of precedence for such sightings. Visit one of my favorite blogs, PRBO's Los Farallones and check out their October 15, 2006 entry. The resident scientists reported a one day sighting of over a hundred migrating songbirds on or near the Farallones, including a hummingbird, a kingfisher, grosbeaks, a meadowlark, sparrows, warblers, wrens, juncos, red-winged blackbirds, a goldfinch and an owl, among others.
On our SFBay Whale Watching trips we like to point out, as we travel within sight of the PRBO housing on the island (the former 1870's lighthouse keeper's quarters), the two wind sculpted cypress trees alongside the two houses. They are known as the "Farallon Forest", the hardy survivors of many unsuccessful attempts to plant trees on these rocks over the years. 
Don't think it's just their grit that inspires admiration; the island's bird biologists find them useful havens for the resting migrant songbirds who, off-course and tired from their detours, can then easily be studied, banded, and released.
Next time I fill that bird feeder I'm going to think twice about the adventures those song birds may have had...
Photos and Text by Kathleen Jacques. (Red-winged Blackbird photo courtesy of Cornell University.)
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Killer Whales, Part II
We’re still getting feedback from passengers who were on board September 23, 2007 when we saw Killer Whales just beyond the Farallon Islands. When a couple of the whales came up from underneath our boat to glide momentarily alongside we were enthralled, no wonder we’re still talking about that trip. SFBay Whale Watching photographer Ed Estes and I were both taking pictures that day and usually from different sections of the boat. I couldn’t wait to see what he captured...as usual he got some stunners.
Chances are that the individual Killer Whales that we saw on September 23rd are known to researchers. We now know that they were “transient” Killer Whales. Known pods of transients range widely between California and Alaska . They were not the same Killer Whales that visited our area last winter, those were “resident” whales from the Washington state region. They can be identified by their dorsal fins and the gray “saddle” markings behind the dorsal fins. Using photo-identification researchers have cataloged over 200 individual transient Killer Whales. 
I was surprised to learn that transients and resident Killer Whales are genetically distinct and are considered by some scientists to be separate species. They differ in diet; transients prey on marine mammals (sea lions, porpoises, dolphins, even other whales), whereas residents are fish eaters (salmon, tuna, herring). 
It was interesting that Doreen Gurrola, our Naturalist, noted the length of the whales’ dives each time because that was a way to establish that these were transients, not residents. It seems that transients dive for longer periods than residents (Doreen noted that each dive lasted about 10 minutes - bingo: transients.), a technique suited for stealth hunting of marine mammals.
Not only do longer dives facilitate stealth hunting but quieter whales evidently do too, because transients vocalize less than residents, using fewer calls and sonar clicks to locate prey. Transients seem to depend more on sight and hearing to locate prey than seaborne conference calls. Although increased vocalization has been reported after a transient prey attack.
I’ll be posting some passenger photos of the Killer Whales from this trip next time, and then I’ll show you some of the other terrific things we’ve been seeing lately besides Killer Whales (yes, the Humpbacks are still out there!).
Photos by Ed Estes. Text by Kathleen Jacques.
