April 14th, 2023 Friday

The first Gray Whale sighting was a solo adult migrating on a slow but steady path 1/2 a mile out. The whale abruptly changed its course making a right turn and headed directly into shore. The whale stayed for over 45 minutes displaying several behaviors including heads up/tails up, tail swashing, large bubble blasts, sandy water spewing out of mouth, head lifts, rolling, sharking and back floating. The whale has a large white scar area on the right side of the rostrum with two older healing wounds. The whale is slightly underweight indicated by slight dips behind its head in the neck area and lack of curves or rotund shape in dorsal views and sunken rostrum area. Gray whales loose 15-30% of body weight during the entire migration and this may be a more typical loss of volume.

The second sighting was a cow/calf pair. The Cow (mother) was underweight, showing a more typically expected loss of volume, nursing gray whales can loose up to 30% body weight during migration while producing milk that is 53-55% milk fat compared to whole cow milk which is 4% milk fat and human breast milk ~ 3.8% milk fat. A calf will consume up to 50 gallons and gain 60-70 lbs per day. The calf was very active and observed several times with an open mouth exposing baleen and filtering sandy water. Identification marks included two horizontal dash lines with a bright white lacy edged white patch that gave an overall impression of a ghost face. I am nicknaming this whale BU (boo) and hope to see it come back in future migrations. The calf also had deep creases in between each vertebra along the dorsal ridge with more pointy protrusions known as the knuckles and it has an elongated top dorsal bump.

The third sighting a second cow/calf pair migrated quickly through the transect stopping along Westward leaving as the sun was setting. The cow was also underweight with a loss of volume is seen on the lateral views over the dorsal thoracic region ( above the scapula area) appears somewhat sunken. Further evaluation would help to determine the overall body volume but this pair moved through the transect too quickly for assessments. The calf has a speckled lacy or mottled pigmentation pattern.

Alternating single and double heart shaped could be seen every 3-5 minutes as the whales continued on, passing close to shore along Zuma. The sunset ended with a bright green flash.

The last sighting was a solo whale traveling 2 miles offshore at a fast pace after sunset.