The Whalenerd‘s Podcast

Episode 12 - Slater went to Baja, Man Swallowed by a whale, and depression chains

Slater gave us a recap of his incredible trip to Baja. He was able to swim with whale sharks and  California sea lions on the same day! He also had two days with friendly gray whales and Frigate birds. There was also a sea turtle research project that the trip participants were able to assist with for green sea turtles. 

We also gave a run down of a few recent whale new items. The man who got swallowed by a whale in South Africa and the recent paper that came out about beaked whales and sperm whales diving to the bottom of the Atacama Trench. 

We also gave a quick recap of the current whale watching events in California. All along the coast is awesome! Get out on the water if you can.

Episode 11 - Science and Art, Recent Whale News, and Questions

Eric and Katlyn gave a quick recap of a Friend's of Hopkins event last week with Ray Troll. He spoke about his new book that he illustrated about fossils on the West Coast of North America. Katlyn also attended an art and science event at Moss Landing Marine Labs last week that she gave a quick summary about.

We shared some recent whale news from this week. The first story was about the sighting of type D Killer Whales off the coast of Cape Horn. We also talked about the Blue Whale migration paper published from Oregon State University while answering a question from a listener. 

We took a few questions from Instagram to end the episode. We weighed in on our opinion of whales in captivity. We answered a follow up question about whale migration. There was a question about white sharks and feeding on whales or stalking whales. We had a message about the CA 51's so we just ranted about that group of Killer Whales for a few minutes. A great question came in about how to support research and conservation even if you live far away from the ocean. Lastly we talked about whale reproduction and birthing in the wild.

Thanks for sending in your questions! We are having lots of fun getting those through Instagram. We will be switching to publishing episodes on Mondays only from now on as the whale season gets busy for us here in Monterey. 

Episode 10 - Scars, Walruses, Interspecies Interactions & Migrations

Eric gave us a report of the screening of the movie Scars from the ACS LA meeting this week. Slater and Katlyn gave a recap of the ACS Monterey Bay meeting which was a talk about Pacific Walrus.

We also answered two questions from our instagram followers. The first one was about interspecies interactions between cetaceans and non cetaceans - we threw in some leatherback sea turtle info too! The second question we answered was about whale migration patterns.

Thanks for the feedback and questions! Keep them coming!

Episode 9 - Photo Tips, Photo ID & Preparing for a Whale Watch

We took more questions from our instagram followers! Thanks for sending those in to us.

We weighed in on the Orca vs Killer Whale naming debate to get this episode started!

We had a great question about the current status of ship strikes and entanglements for large whales as well.

We also addressed some topics that we get asked frequently about photography and how to best prepare for a whale watch trip. This lead us into a discussion of identifying individual whales, dolphins and even sea lions using photo identification. 

Episode 8 - How We Became Whale Nerds!

In this episode we talked about how we all got our start in the whale realm. We all currently work in the whale watch industry in Monterey, but none of us started there!

Listen in on how we all ended up in the industry and how we got to Monterey. We hope this episode inspires you to follow your passions too!

We have been loving all your questions and topic suggestions - keep sending them our way. We are also adding to the resource page on the podbean site for y'all to check out as well. 

Episode 7 - Q&A from Instagram & favorite whale movies / books

We had more questions from Instagram for this episode! We started things off with your questions about whale lifespans, pilot whales in California and where to watch Killer Whales. Thanks for sending those in! It's super fun to hear your inquiries.

After answering some questions, we chatted about our favorite whale movies and books! We are also building up a resource list on our site so you can access them at anytime. If you have resource suggestions send them our way!

 

Episode 6 - Q&A from Instagram! Whales, Turtles & Sharks

We decided to start things off with questions from you! Thanks for sending in questions through our Instagram story this week! Keep the topic suggestions and questions coming in.

Things started off with our favorite whales and went down the rabbit hole from there! We did a fun lightning round about things we have seen that we thought the other co-hosts had not seen. Animals included: whales, dolphins, beaked whales, sharks, turtles and seabirds.

We had a great question about humpback whale dialects and we elaborated about humpback whale culture and sighting histories. 

We ended things talking about sharks (one of our secret favorites) in California, especially the juvenile white sharks in the central coast.

We hit y'all with some fun vocabulary too! Watch out for those new and exciting words! 

Episode 5 - Weird Whale Facts!

As we mentioned at the end of Episode 4 - here are the weird whale facts!

We went through as many lesser known whale facts as we could think of in this episode. We covered narwhal tusks, ambergris, whale lice, barnacles and so much more! This episode was super fun and we definitely have more fun whale facts to talk about in future episode too. 

Have some whale facts you would like us to talk about more? Other topic suggestions? Let us know on instagram! @whalenerds

Episode 4 - Dinosaurs, Whale Bones & Learning about Whale Evolution

We went wayyyy back for this one. Slater and Katlyn have been listening to a book about whales but written from a paleontologist's point of view. This inspired us to talk about how whales started as mammals on land and went back to the water. Eric dropped some fossil knowledge on us about where to find marine fossils in California and look at them in museums too.

We also meandered our way through whale bones, vestigial legs and whale evolution. We talked about whale strandings that we have seen on beaches in California. Lastly, we briefly covered some interesting whale adaptations that are on whales that currently exist today. 

 

Episode 3 - Types of Whales, Earwax and Underwater Sounds

We made a new version of episode 3! Thanks for sticking with us through the technical difficulties - we are still learning! 

We changed gears for the topics - we will circle back to the land based whale watching conversation in a future podcast. This time we started off talking about the difference between mysticetes and odontocetes and things got more specific from there. Topics shifted to whale earwax and how scientists can study a whale's whole life from the wax! We finished things up by talking about the stationary hydrophone in Monterey Bay and the sounds whales make underwater.