1 North Bound 0 South Bound 5.5 hrs

February 22,2024 Thursday

One north bound, large adult Gray Whale observed passing Bird Rock just before the Bay Watch boat slowly rounded Bird Rock. The whale continued on its migration, bearing left and out to deeper water blowing just once with each surface interval as it made its way across the transect towards the horizon. The Bay Watch boat continued close to shore with the ebbing tide as surfers waited for the perfect wave in much clearer water than prior days.

SunDog formations occurred just before the sun set today. Sundogs are parts of a rainbows seen at 22 degrees from the sun on either side or both sides as was the case tonight. This phenomenon is only seen under the right circumstances when ice crystals form in the cloudy marine layer. The bright shimmer of colors are always displayed with red is closest to the sun with blue furthest away based on the refraction or bending of the light rays.

A sun pillar or sun tower is a beam of light forming a vertical line from the horizon up through clouds as the sun continued to set behind a cold marine layer filled with ice crystals. Today we saw both phenonomons.

In other news today: the lunar space company named Intuitive Machines who’s motto is “We Open Access to the Moon for the Progress of Humanity” Nova-C lander named Odysseus soft landed on the moon at 3:23pm PST. The fist commercially built and commercially operated soft landing was streamed live. A truly historic day with the first US lunar landing since Dec. 11, 1972!

After sunset, SpaceX Starlink Falcon 9 Launched low earth orbit satellites at 8:11pm PST from Vandenberg Space-Force Base in Lompoc. The spectacular sight was viewed as far south as Mexico and to the east it was seen in Arizona.

Thank you for reading the post and caring about the Gray Whales. If you would like to be notified of updates or new posts, please add your email address in the box below to receive notifications.