Well, it's hard to believe the time has come, but Andrew and I are leaving tomorrow for the east coast. A month has never gone by so fast for me before, but I definitely think it's a good sign. There are so many memories, and today was no exception. We aren't about to slow down just because our time is almost done. We woke up to clear conditions this morning and headed over to Moss Landing Harbor for a dolphin survey. Somehow, the weather thought it would be funny to change and heavy fog rolled in. You can't stop a determined dolphin hunter though and we headed out nonetheless after it lifted just a little. We headed north and hit 3 dolphins early on, but we lost site in the fog shortly after Andrew was able to snap a few shots. We traveled north all the way to the barge without encountering any other bottlenose dolphins, but there were some other animals around. We ran into a group of harbor porpoises...nothing spectacular...until it was followed by another group, and then another, and then a few more. We think there were at least 30 animals in this school; there were fins everywhere! We saw a mola mola in the water too. I'm not sure why it's beneficial to be a fish that looks like your tail was caught and ripped off in a lawn mower (or whatever the equivalent machinery is for the ocean...or whatever), but it seems to work out for these guys. I actually thought it was a dead fish floating in the water at first but then I remember that I had the same reaction looking at the mola in the deep ocean tank at the aquarium. I guess I should give them more credit. Even though we didn't find any more dolphins, we had heard rumors that the whale watch boats had recently been spotting orcas in the bay, so Danny suggested we "do something wild" and we headed offshore. Once we got out over the bay we spotted some whale watch boats and scanned the horizon for activity, but we were surprised by a school of Risso's dolphins (see picture) right near out boat. I've never seen these guys before and I have to say it was pretty spectacular. Think beluga whale with a dorsal fin and a little bit of grey. The individuals we saw were pretty white, which I believe indicates older age, and we could see them coming in the water. They're a bit bigger than our bottlenose dolphins, and have many scars on their bodies. Their brunt rostrums were pretty distinct, but I thought they were absolutely beautiful animals and I was completely entranced for a few minutes as they passed by (luckily Cyndi was driving the boat and managed to avoid the waves or else I would have been a goner). We then caught what Danny thinks was a Pacific white-sided dolphin jumping out of the water, but all I saw was belly and tail so I'll take her word for it. I think that still counts though...anyways, we headed back to Moss Landing and hit the fog once again, but it definitely could have been worse. Our afternoon was filled with dolphin data work. The catalog is over 200 animals now, with new ones being named all the time. The names are getting more random and creative as more people contribute, but Mark still somehow has a handle on it all. Too bad I haven't found a way to start naming otters...I'm sure I could come up some winners. Who knows, there's always the future :)

-Steph