Results tagged “whales” from Daily Link

If you've been rooting for the whales in the ongoing Supreme Court case involving Navy sonars and our mammoth ocean neighbors, you'll want to hear the latest news in the whaling industry.

This week's International Whaling Convention is devoted to hashing out issues in whale hunting, conservation and research. This year, it's being held in Chile, but the news hits much closer to home.

San Pedro is the home of the American Cetacean Society's Los Angeles chapter. The ACS is an organization devoted to protecting whales, dolphins and porpoises.

The group has sent Kate Sardi, its national research chair, to the convention, and she's been maintaining a blog covering the event.

Follow Sardi's blog all week. Information on ACS' local marine mammal lectures and whale-watching trips is available at the Los Angeles chapter Web site. They've got a few whale-watching excursions coming up in July and August, so sign up now before all the spaces are filled up!

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My daughter and I staked out the seascape near the Point Vicente Interpretive Center after a field trip with her preschool class on Wednesday. The volunteers who track the whale migration for the American Cetacean Society were abuzz with tales of what they saw the day before: A group of orcas heading for Redondo Beach. So we waited. And watched. And waited. But my disappointed 4-year-old pouted the whole way home because we didn't see a thing.

Turns out we should have stuck around a little longer. According to the ACS Daily Log, Wednesday was the first big day for spotting the whales' northbound return trip

Log notes for March 12:

Our first big northbound count day featured pulses of gray whales throughout the day. One whale milled nearshore for over thirty minutes. One whale BREACHED two times within 1/4 mile offshore. The three whales in our final sighting milled nearshore, and one lunged. We also saw common and bottlenose dolphin.

The log also tracks the totals for the season and has charts comparing this year to last year. Check here foroverview of the project.

According to a daily log on the American Cetacean Society’s Web site, observers have spotted one northbound and 57 southbound gray whales since Dec. 1. The southbound migration peaks in mid-January, with about 15 whales spotted each day. February numbers are between five and 15 whales per day, and up to 25 can be seen per day in March, during the northbound migration. The site also offers tickets for whale watching tours and information on how to get more involved.