The Ultimate Whale Watch trip sponsored by ACS-LA on Saturday saw a plethora of creatures: Gray Whales, Dall’s Porpoise, Long-Beaked Common Dolphin, Short-Beaked Common Dolphin, Risso’s Dolphins and even some far off Fin Whales and Humpback Whale. Let that be a lesson to me to always go on the local all-day trips!

The current tally of Gray Whales from the ACS-LA Census is 554 northbound whales. The census has even started seeing northbound cow-calf pairs (they migrate north much later than the rest of the whales) and can be seen locally well into May.

There was a cool article in the LA Times about Humboldt Squid, which were once rare off SoCal. It may be that they’ve moved into a niche in our local ecosystem since other larger predators like sharks are proving scarce. Pete Thomas’ previous article from ’04 Are Squid Viscious also provides more info about them. Thomas will also have another article later this week about his experience on the Ultimate Whale Watch trip Saturday the 24th mentioned above.

The Cabrillo Marine Aquarium is holding a fundraising trip on Sunday morning to benefit the whale watch program. The Special Whale Watch is only $20 per person and you get a slide show at the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium to introduce you to the sights of the sea, then a full 3 hour guided tour from the 22nd Street Landing on the Pacific Monarch. 9:30 AM to 2:00PM. Call 310-548-7562 for more info.
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Last week at my whale watching training class we had a special guest lecture from Joe McKinzie, a local historian and collector of postcards. He has two books of postcards of the area: San Pedro and San Pedro Bay. Unfortunately there were some technical difficulties and Mr. McKinzie wasn’t able to give his slideshow of postcards. Fortunately he’s returning to the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium to give it another go tomorrow night. What’s fortunate about that? The last Tuesday of the month the sessions are open to the public as part of the American Cetacean Society – LA Chapter’s lecture series.

(Did you know before it became Los Angeles Harbor, the area was known as San Pedro Bay?)

Where: Cabrillo Marine Aquarium
3720 Stephen M. White Drive
San Pedro

When: 7:30 PM (to about 9 PM)

More at the ACS-LA website. Hopefully I’ll have some clever nuggets of local history to report back on Wednesday morning.
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Today I went whale watching up at Pt. Dume. Well, really it was a picnic with The Man, but there were whales. Hoo, boy! There were really some whales!

We arrived there around 1PM and hiked up from the Zuma Beach parking lot, past the rock climbers. We settled in at a spot just shy of the little platform on the boardwalk on the south side of the point. We ate our sandwiches and started on our pineapple chunks when we spotted a series of blows just to the south of the point.

But before I bore you with the details, I’ll give you this picture of a cute ground squirrel who ate one of our pineapple while we were had our backs turned. Stick around after the jump if you’re curious about the rest of it.

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This afternoon I went out on the Voyager out of Redondo Sportfishing and got to check another species off my list.

Pictured above is a Pacific White Sided Dolphin. It’s not that they’re a particularly rare dolphin, I just hadn’t seen them before. They’re actually very common up the coast a bit, if you’ve been out boating in Monterey Bay you’ve probably seen them.

(A crappier picture and info about these dolphins after the jump.)
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There were TONS of whales out over the weekend. I may have said that last week was the peak of the northbound migration, but the recent numbers say otherwise. 154 whales in the past week. Though there are more daylight hours for observation, late afternoon fog has made spotting less than optimal.

Fin Whales are still being spotted in the area. Humpback Whales are being spotted in the Channel Islands (a few weeks early this year).

This Saturday is the American Cetacean Society LA Chapter’s Annual Ultimate Whale Watch trip. It’s a full day on the Monte Carlo (departing at 8AM returning at 5PM) and going anywhere and everywhere (the west end of Catalina, for starters). Tickets are still available for this trip that’s led by multiple naturalists and excellent spotters. Tickets are $60. See more here.
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Good times for tourists visiting Hollywood & Highland.

Photo taken by Jess who blogs at Lianhau.nu and came to visit the west coast on spring break. Other good fun with computers can be found here in the Flickr group.

Tonight marks what could be a fortunate missile launch. Vandenberg is testing a new sea-based X-band radar for the Missile Defense Agency. The fortunate part is that we might actually be able to see the plume of the third stage exhaust because of the early DST shift.

The launch window begins at 8:30 PM.

The unfortunate part is that the weatherfolk are calling for thick cloud cover and rain through tomorrow.

Up-to-date schedules are available here. Go here if you want more info about observing launches and photographing them.

(For the record there are other unfortunate parts about missiles and test and whatnot, but I’m not going to get into that here.)

Photo by Malingering via Flickr.

UPDATE: The missile launched about an hour late at 9:27 PM. The sky was relatively clear down in San Pedro at 9PM when I was looking for it, but by the time I got back to Silverlake, eveything was cloaked in clouds again (and even a little drizzle). Did anyone else catch a glimpse of it?

There’s a great story in the LA Times about a successful undercover operation to catch illegal Spiny Lobster fishing.

Spiny Lobster are legal for trapping outside of Santa Monica Bay from October through mid-March. It has been illegal to catch them inside Santa Monica Bay since 1930. (If you go out whale watching with me you can see the buoys that mark the edge of Santa Monica Bay along the line where it’s legal to trap and still shallow enough to put the traps down.)

Spiny Lobsters aren’t like their Maine kin that have large claws, these “bugs” are prized for their tail meat. Go read the story about how these fishermen caught their interest and how they got the evidence to take them into custody. You can now expect the CSI: Department of Fish and Game to be announced at the Upfronts in May.

Image via Flickr user Paphio (and is of an Atlantic Spiny Lobster, not one in the Santa Monica Bay).

Mike at Franklin Avenue has a great post up about the crosswalk and coming traffic light on Hyperion in front of the Trader Joe’s and Gelson’s.

Not only was a pedestrian killed at that intersection, but a Trader Joe’s employee, Adam Authier, was run down on his bike recently. He’s still recovering from his injuries.

There is a benefit set for Authier, who didn’t have insurance yet. (It would be even better if they caught the guy who ran him down and made him pay.) The Silver Lake Trader Joe’s and the Company of Angels theatre are coming together to sponsor a benefit on April 1 at the Grand Avenue Club downtown (1024 S. Grand Ave.) from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.

See more coverage at Franklin Avenue with more links and a petition to speed up the traffic signal. Maybe we can just get a crossing guard until July when the signal is supposed to be activated.

Photo found via flickr, taken by Zeetz Jones

The Saturday 10AM trip on the Voyager out of Redondo was pretty awesome. There were at least three Gray Whales in the area, though some fog made it a little difficult to spot them, we did follow one for a little while. The best part were our encounters with two different groups of Offshore Bottlenose Dolphins. Offshores are often darker and much larger than the ones seen close to the beaches. There were at least three individuals I saw in the pod of 30 that were probably 14 feet long (instead of the 10 foot long Torrance coastal pod that are usually seen along Santa Monica Bay beaches).
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I saw this in the LAFD photo stream on Flickr and had to call attention to the full set. A car went into a swimming pool in Woodland Hills late last month. No one was injured. But it looks cool.

Sadly there are no photos of them getting it out. I’m assuming they got it out.

(I know you clever readers will come up with a better headline.)

UPDATE: It looks like LAFD has removed the photo (and only that photo) from their Flickr stream. Oh well … the prize for the caption of the short-lived public life of the photo goes to David Markland.

UPDATED UPDATE: LAFD Blog now has the whole story with more photos.

I can only chalk up this snafu to the Y2.07K DST debacle … yeah, that’s the ticket.

The Man and I were rather suprised to find a film production fully ensconsed at Rocky Peak Park when we arrived this afternoon. Sure, I pass by productions all the time. In fact, I passed by one on my way back from whale watching this afternoon. Somehow finding on in an area like this seemed a little more noteworthy.

Without much info besides the title of the picture, Lions for Lambs, we went ahead with our hike (taking a different trail because the production occupied the easier one we were hoping to take). On the way back we asked the guard nicely if we could look at the production set up, which was in a bit of a bowl in the rocky hills. He said okay and we were able to climb up the hill to one of the lighting platforms to look in.

The Man guessed correctly that the location was doubling for Afganistan. More info after the jump about the movie itself. Loads more photos in this set.
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The Encounter restaurant at LAX has been closed because of structural difficulties. Please stand by.

I was particularly fond of this sentence from the LATimes:

Inspectors uncovered the problem after a 1,000-pound piece of white stucco fell off the underside of one of the arches and smashed into the eatery’s roof.

Uh, the loud noise made by the half ton of falling stucco didn’t somehow indicate the problem?

The photo above was provided by the generous CC license of Lasagna Boy