Day 14 - Two weeks in, halfway through...and "There be whales here!"

The BYU-Idaho Marine Biology Field Experience (MBFE) hit a landmark today - on 18 May we will be halfway through our time at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology.

Students spent the morning doing research, followed by class at 11am.  After lunch Patrick and Ty went back to South Cove, Cape Arago, to check on their hermit crab experiments, and then at 3p we had a second session of class.

At 4pm the class attended the weekly OIMB seminar.  This week's seminar was given by a fisheries biologist from NOAA (The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) based at Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA.  He talked about frontal boundaries between different masses of ocean water and their effects on larval and juvenile rock fishes.  It was pretty interesting.

The main excitement today was when the words "whales sighted" were uttered in the Dining Hall right after dinner.  A U of Ore student told me he'd seen whales just outside of South Cove, Cape Arago, about 30 mins earlier.  You've never seen a group of college students move faster.  Before you knew it, they emerged from one of the buildings toting spotting scopes, binoculars, and cameras.  And we were off to Cape Arago to see what we could see.

We were initially a bit disappointed when we didn't see anything at the Middle Cove observation point, but I spotted whales when we could look into South Cove. The students sprinted over.  Before long everyone was spotting whales blowing.  We counted seven gray whales, including at least two calves.  They are majestic creatures.  We watched them for 45 mins to an hour as they worked their way up the coast.

Gray whale blowing

Cape Arago, Oregon, May 17, 2013

(c) 2013 Alan Holyoak

The students were so excited to see these whales...I mean, who wouldn't be?  It was extremely cool.

I know I took several photos of the group watching the whales, but for some reason not all photos transferred to my computer last night, and I deleted the photos from my camera without double checking - DOH!  You only learn when you lose, I guess.  Sigh...

At least a couple of the sunset shots I took just before we came back to OIMB transferred over.  Here's a particularly nice one over Simpsons Reef, north of Cape Arago, Oregon.

Sunset over Simpsons Reef, Oregon

May 17, 2013

(c) 2013 Alan Holyoak

PS - You will be happy to hear that Dallas' extra car key arrived today, and all is well.