It Has Been a Whale of a Summer Off Santa Barbara Coast

What a summer it has been off the Santa Barbara coast.

Blue whales moved into the channel to feed several weeks ago, providing whale-watchers a rare opportunity to view the world’s largest creatures up close.

It seemed the leviathans would never leave, but they appeared to have had enough a week or so ago when killer whales moved into the channel and started harassing their larger cousins, providing whale-watchers an even rarer opportunity.

“They weren’t attacking them, but they were chasing them down and running after them,” said Fred Benko, skipper of the Condor, which has been taking passengers to the whales from its port at Santa Barbara Sea Landing. “They were relentless, just bullying the blues.”

But now, Benko says, the killer whales, or orcas, have left and the blue whales have returned, at times swimming alongside Benko’s boat with dozens of smaller humpback whales.

“We had a week of pretty poor sightings, and some irate passengers during that week,” Benko said. “But now it seems there are more whales than ever before.”

The whales are feeding on krill, tiny shrimp-like creatures that have flooded the channel in recent months.

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Divers have been reporting strange happenings off the Central California coast near Point Lobos: low-frequency sounds they say they can feel through their wetsuits.

Officials with the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary have been investigating the source of the sounds, which one diver said were “loud enough to rattle your lungs,” but nobody has been able to explain the phenomenon.

The U.S. Naval postgraduate school in Monterey said it has not been conducting any tests in the area, which might have explained the source of the short bursts of sound--occurring at depths to 90 feet at six-second intervals.

One theory is that the noises are the mating calls of a small fish commonly called midshipmen because of their skins’ resemblance to navy garb. The courting fish have been known to keep local houseboat owners awake at night with their low-frequency calls.

However, the sounds have been occurring during the day so experts are puzzled. “We’re trying, but we haven’t been able to track it down yet,” Aaron King, a spokesman for the sanctuary, said Tuesday.

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Aside from the waves that have been pounding the south shore of Oahu, it has been a relatively uneventful summer in Hawaii. Tiger sharks have been no problem. “It’s been unusually quiet,” said John Naughton, a Honolulu biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service. “For nothing at all to happen is really quite unusual.”

Only a year ago, Oahu was embroiled in a full-blown shark scare, as claims of shark sightings flooded the state almost daily. The scare may have stemmed from a series of attacks the previous winter on the north shore of the island, which led to a series of shark hunts.

Naughton credits the hunts--which led to the killing of dozens of large tiger sharks--for the lack of attacks and sightings around Oahu this year. And the shark issue was all but forgotten until Monday, when an 8-year-old girl suffered lacerations after she was bitten by something while swimming off Makaha on Oahu’s west shore.

Naughton, however, termed the attack a “nothing event” and said it had yet to be determined if it was even a shark that bit the girl.

“It could have been a small shark, or it could have been a moray eel for all we know,” he said.

Briefly

HUNTING--Thunderstorms scattered the birds at times, but some hunters were able to shoot their 10-dove limits on opening day last Thursday. The best hunting was apparently in the Niland area of Imperial County and the area around Winterhaven near Yuma, Ariz. Hunters reported concentrations of birds in both areas. In the San Joaquin Valley, limits were more difficult to come by. Lowell Kolb, 60, of Seal Beach reported an average of about five birds per hunter during the first two days of the season--the first half of which closes Sept. 15. “Some did better than others and limited out,” Kolb said. “But we hunted in three different places, but hardly saw anything at all. We ended up walking through the vineyards and had to scare up the birds. It wasn’t bad as it was in the worst years but it was not very good.”

FISHING--Local waters are thick with bonito, with boats averaging 50-60 a day, and fishermen at Catalina and off the Palos Verdes Peninsula are enjoying an excellent calico bass bite as well. Marlin fishing has picked up offshore, and Avalon Seafood had weighed 43 fish as of Tuesday morning. Yellowtail are reportedly abundant at the oil rigs off Huntington Beach, but the fish refuse to bite. Top catch: a 10-pound king salmon that somehow strayed down the coast. It was picked up Sunday by an angler aboard the City of Redondo.

San Diego long-range: Skippers of overnight boats are hoping that, for once, the fish will remain in a feeding mood. The fleet reported impressive counts of yellowfin tuna, yellowtail and dorado for the first time in weeks on Monday and on Tuesday boated nothing but yellowfin--142 of them for 42 passengers, which isn’t bad considering the poor counts in recent weeks. Farther down the Baja California coast, the fish are more cooperative as anglers on four-day trips are putting hundreds of yellowfin tuna and yellowtail on the decks.

Cabo San Lucas: What few people are visiting Land’s End are suffering heat and humidity but enjoying outstanding fishing for blue marlin, tuna and dorado. The Picses Fleet reported one angler catching and releasing a blue marlin, then catching 14 yellowfin tuna and 11 dorado. The blue marlin are not huge, but they are plentiful. The tuna are mostly in the 10- to 25-pound class, but the Gaviota Fleet weighed in one at 171 pounds. The dorado are mostly 15-40 pounds. Fishing remains steady up the gulf side of the peninsula to and beyond the East Cape. At Loreto, dorado are abundant but small, averaging about 10 pounds. Sailfish averaging 85 pounds are abundant as well.

CALENDAR--Baja California fishing expert Neil Kelly will give a seminar on the subject Thursday from 7-9 p.m. at Discover Baja Travel Club’s San Diego office. Details: (619) 275-4225. . . . Hal Jannsen, an expert on still-water fly fishing for trout, is making the rounds at the local clubs, giving presentations Sept. 13 at the Downey Fly Fishers’ meeting, (310) 425-7936; Sept. 14 at the Pasadena Casting Club, (818) 449-1152, and Sept. 15 at the Conejo Valley Fly Fishers, (805) 496-7332.