Gray whale watching started December 26th and it’s shaping up to be one of the best whale watching seasons ever! There has been a ton of press coverage, so this post is definitely on the late side. But it’s still worth mentioning in case anyone missed the news or needs a reminder. Volunteers for the… [read more]
Visiting the Adelaide Port River dolphins
Now that I’ve learned so much about the Adelaide Port River dolphins, I would love to travel to Adelaide and go dolphin watching. But if I actually invested the time and money to travel all the way to South Australia…would I see any dolphins? And do Wave and her pod hang out in the Port… [read more]
Adelaide Port River dolphins: update on Wave
Now that we’ve concluded Billie the dolphin’s story, it’s time for a more detailed update on Wave (Billie’s tail walking predecessor). First a recap: I found out about Wave in April of 2010 from an email that was sent out to marine mammal experts and fans looking for information on dolphin skin conditions. Wave and… [read more]
Adelaide Port River dolphins: the rest of the story
Picking up where we left off in the last post…after five years of interacting with Sandy Sanford, a retired policeman, Billy the dolphin stops showing up for early morning swims with the racing horses in 1988. Here’s the conclusion to this fascinating story from Paul Huxtable: “Shortly after he [Billy the dolphin] went missing, a… [read more]
Adelaide Port River dolphins: starting from the beginning
The story of the Adelaide Port River dolphins is much more interesting than I ever imagined! To understand how Wave became such a famous tail walking dolphin, we have to revisit the year 1983 where it all started with a man, a dog, a horse and a dolphin named Billy. Paul Huxtable shared this amazing… [read more]
Introducing the Adelaide Port River dolphins
One of the wonderful things about having a website is the ability to connect with people from all over the world. Around Thanksgiving, I received an email from Debbie and Paul Huxtable, a couple who lives in Adelaide, South Australia. Not only are they a couple, but they also happen to be a couple of… [read more]
Frustrating whale watching trip
My most recent whale watching trip on Saturday, October 8th was frustrating! The weather was amazing, but as the Voyager headed out from Redondo Beach, the first dolphin we saw had its tail tangled in fishing line. Right away we could tell something was up because the common dolphin was swimming alone and very erratically.… [read more]
Looking down a blue whale’s nose
Everything about a blue whale is awesome, evening looking down its nose! Why? Because it’s the largest nose in the world! On a recent whale watching trip the captain compared the size of one blue whale nostril to the size of a human baby and a blue whale lung to the size of a bus.… [read more]
Join me for some blue whale watching and rhyming!
The blues are here don’t you know, just get on out there, it’s time to go! See the largest animal to ever live on earth, witness it’s massive hulking, bulking girth. Who knew they would ever visit Santa Monica Bay, I wish there was always enough krill around for them to stay. So rare and… [read more]
Whale watching photos taken near Santa Barbara part 3
These are actually dolphin watching photos! We saw three types of dolphins during the all-day ACS whale watching trip: bottlenose dolphins, common dolphins and Risso’s dolphins. We saw a huge pod of common dolphins that were having a blast. Many came over to the boat to do some bowriding, which is always fun to watch,… [read more]