Kingdom of the Blue Whale: Premieres March 9
Be sure to tune into the National Geographic Channel on March 9 for the premiere of "Kingdom of the Blue Whale." They already have some great interactive content to explore on their web site including an interactive Flash module that lets you measure the size of a blue whale as compared with school buses, Triceratops, M1A1 Abrams tanks, the Space Shuttle Orbiter, and more.

Also check out the March 2009 print issue of National Geographic Magazine for the in-depth story and some incredible photos from the field.

While whale watching in the Santa Barbara Channel in July of 2008, we came across the R/V Pacific Storm, which is a research vessel from Oregon State University and one of the home bases for their blue whale research. Here are a couple of photos I snapped of the Pacific Storm and its Zodiac boat which was out tagging blue whales. The Pacific Storm is also pictured in the March issue of National Geographic.

Whale Quest Kapalua: Maui, Hawaii
I was lucky enough to attend Whale Quest Kapalua on Maui, Hawaii from February 13-15 this year. It was an amazing event (free to the public) and I hope to be able to attend again next year. One of the things I enjoyed most about this conference was the amazing photos and videos that people brought back from the field. Jason Sturgis showed some unimaginable underwater footage of humpback whales and Adam Ravetch shared excerpts of his upcoming film, "Arctic Giants of the North." There were many informative and educational lectures, as well. To keep tabs on next year's event, visit the Whale Trust web site.

New Whale Videos Posted
This past weekend was yet another amazing one for whale-watching in southern California. Our captain says we spotted 48 Blue Whales on our Saturday outing in the Santa Barbara Channel. Many of these whales were swimming off in the distance, but I'd say we got a close-up view of 20-25 of them. This number is hard to fathom, considering the fact that they are highly endangered animals, as mentioned in an earlier post. Despite the unbearably hot temperatures on land, it was quite chilly out on the water and the water was very rough due to high winds. As a result of the turbulent waters, many of my videos have a dizzying perspective, but there were a few good ones in the bunch and I'll be posting those to the OceanSpot Channel of YouTube. Here's a compilation of the whale videos that are currently posted on the OceanSpot Channel of YouTube. This video loop includes various of species of whales in the wild:

Videos of Blue Whales (near Santa Barbara, CA)
This has been an amazing season for Blue-Whale watching in southern California. Whale-watching tours in the Santa Barbara area have been spotting as many as 10 or 20 Blue Whales per daily outing, which is an amazing number, especially given the fact that these are endangered animals. I've been lucky enough to get out to see them on many a weekend and have had some amazing adventures. Armed with a new video camera, I now have more footage than I know what to do with. As time allows, I'll be posting the best clips to the OceanSpot Channel of YouTube and will post some of my favorites here from time to time. Here are a couple of clips to kick things off. The first clip shows Blue Whale lingering very slowly at the surface taking a series of breaths:




The next clip shows two Blue Whales surfacing, one of which shows a bit of its rostrum (nose) as it surfaces:

To view still photos, click the badge below to see pictures of the Blue Whales I spotted on July 14, July 22, July 28, and August 11, 2007 or click here to go directly to the slideshow.

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Yangtze River Dolphin Feared Extinct
It appears that the highly endangered Yangtze River dolphin, also known as the Baiji dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer), is probably extinct. According to a recent story from Time.com, this would be the first time that a species of cetacean was extinguished due to human activity...activities such as overfishing of the Baiji's target food sources, severe pollution in the river systems, a high amount of boat traffic, and lack of intervention to try to save the species. There have not been any confirmed sightings of the dolphin since 2002 and the most recent survey failed to find evidence that they still exist.

The Baiji was quite a unique creature. It foraged for food in shallow waters through the use of echolocation and was virtually blind--due to the cloudy waters in which it lived, eyesight evolved as a less-important function over time. Unfortunately, the frequent boat traffic then interfered with the dolphins' hearing, thus making echolocation, and their ability to find food, more difficult. The Baiji's demise should serve as yet another reminder that we need to be mindful of our environment and remember that we are sharing this planet with many other forms of life. The Finless Porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides), another resident of the Yangtze River is also at risk, but if we modify our behavior, there is still hope of saving it. (The photo in this post is from AFP/Getty and appeared with the original story.)