The Whalenerd‘s Podcast

Our first special guest was Kate Cummings! She is the owner and operator of Blue Ocean Whale Watch in Moss Landing, CA. Kate was one of the passengers on the recent Cheeseman's Ecology Safaris trip to Antarctica! She gave us an excellent report about her two week trip where she saw whales, penguins, pinnipeds, and lots of ice! 

We were so jealous after listening to her report! She had an excellent trip and the weather cooperated for most of the time they were there too. 

 

 

Katlyn just got back from Baja yesterday! She gave a report about all the logistics of the trip and all the whales she saw! Yes, she did get to pet a gray whale. San Ignacio lagoon was incredible!

Meanwhile, Slater and Eric had an absolutely insane week in Monterey! Humpbacks had already been coming in to the bay before Katlyn left, but they have settled in and really been feeding all week!. There have been huge groups of dolphins as well. Slater finally got to see a large group of northern right whale dolphins. 

The biggest and best sighting of the week was SOUTHERN RESIDENT KILLER WHALES! L-pod was sighted in the bay on March 31st 2019! This was an incredible sighting of a highly endangered population of killer whales that normally inhabit the surrounding areas of the Salish Sea and southern Canada. 

Also, Eric saw an otter eat a bird.

We started off this episode talking about lone male killer whales. That conversation led us to a broader conversation about killer whale social groups and defining Bigg's / transient killer whales. 

Then we answered a question about comparing whale sizes to everyday objects. For example, a humpback whale is the same length as a school bus!

We also talked about recent whale sightings in California. We can't wait for the spring to be in full swing! 

The next episode will be delayed by 1 day to hear Katlyn's recap from Baja on April 2nd when she gets back.  

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.

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. 

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!

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. 

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. 

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!

 

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!