Whale Watching Oregon Coast

Dockside Charters located in Depoe Bay, Oregon offers whale watching zodiac style aboard the Whales Tail. This is a very unique experience that puts you "up close and personal" for observing Oregon's resident gray whales. This is a great trip that gives you and your family an adventure that is not to be missed.

Here you can enjoy the incredible scenery of the Oregon Coast, transit the worlds smallest navigable channel, and enjoy watching gray whales, humpback whales, orca whales, seals, sea lions, and other marine life. We try to provide you with a once in a lifetime experience that is not to be missed along with some great memories. The Whales Tail takes up to 6 people or less and has all the latest safety equipment, we hope to see you soon.

Whale Bits

Off the Oregon Coast we see gray whales every month of the year. There are approximately 18,000 gray whales in the winter and spring migrations and a group of 200-400 whales that feed along the Oregon and Washington coast during fall and summer. In the spring March through June most of these gray whales make the journey from their breeding lagoons in Baja California to Arctic feeding grounds. On this northbound migration, small numbers of gray whales fall out of the migration group and stop at various locations along the Oregon coast, one of these places is Depoe Bay. These whales are called resident whales.

For whales to be known as residents, they must stay around a certain area for at least two days, exhibit feeding behavior, and return year after year. This distinguishes them from migrating whales which stop on their migration and feed then move on their way.

Along the central Oregon coast, resident gray whales begin showing up in May. On any one day throughout the summer, numbers range from one to 20. Some arrive in early summer, leave, and then return in late summer or early fall.

Resident gray whales remain around Depoe Bay for a period of days to months. Some residents don’t show up for a year or more, there is one whale “Scarback” who been around for at least 17 years.The last of the residents leave in October or November and return to the breeding lagoons of Baja California to rejoin the remainder of the population.



Click to view the latest forecast: Marine Forecast

Depoe Bay Events
Boiler Bay Fireworks Display
Highlight your Independence Day celebration.
When: July 3 Dusk
Location: Boiler Bay
Cost: Free

Something new this year we are offering are sweatshirts that have our Whales Tail logo on the back, different colors and sizes are available.

Click on the link below for our whale watching video, I hope to have more videos soon.

http://oceannavigation.blogspot.com/2010/04/awesome-whale-watching-video-on-whales.html

Daily Trip Times
8:00am, 9:30am, 11:00am, 12:30pm, 2:00pm, 3:30pm, 5:00pm, 6:30pm

Nautical Bits
Polaris - The North Star - Is always in the northern nighttime sky, Polaris, the North Star, marks the North Celestial Pole. For those of us in the northern hemisphere it is a navigator's benchmark, the elevation above the horizon is closely equal to the observer's latitude. Actually, Polaris is slightly off the pole. The pole itself, about which Polaris goes, marks true north, the fundamental direction for us in the northern hemisphere. Thousands of years from now, Polaris will be well off the pole, other stars someday taking its place. Polaris also marks the end of the handle of the Little Dipper, the prominent figure of Ursa Minor, the Smaller Bear.

Crux - The Southern Cross
If you live in the Southern hemisphere, or if you are vacationing in someplace like Hawaii, you can see a small but beautiful constellation with the shape of a cross. Its name is Crux and it is located very close to the constellation of Centaurus. The brightest star in Crux is called Acrux. Acrux is really two stars going around orbitting each other, but they are so far away that we see them as one star. Explorers of the Southern hemisphere used Crux to guide them when sailing. By looking at Crux, they could figure out in which direction to sail without getting lost.

The coffee is fresh and free, so stop by and say hello.and see what's going on.

Gift Certificates are available year round.

For more information on Whale Watching visit: http://oceannavigation.blogspot.com

Dockside Charters
270 Coast Guard Pl.
Depoe Bay, Oregon 97341

Phone:541-765-2545
Toll Free:1-800-733-8915

Stellar Sea Lions

Also known as, the Northern sea lion, the Stellar sea lion is the largest member of the Otariidae family. Its eastern Pacific population is listed as threatened.

Size: Males weigh up to 2,400 pounds and measure up to 11 feet in length; are much larger than females, especially in head, neck and shoulders. Females weigh up to 770 pounds and are seven to nine feet in length.

Description: Mature animals are light buff to reddish brown with furless flippers that appear brown or black. Males have manes resembling lion manes of long hairs extending from the back of their heads over their necks and shoulders.

Habitat: Range restricted to North Pacific Ocean and Southern Bering Sea. 2,000 estimated to live along Oregon coast. Found in coastal waters when foraging and migrating, but rarely in bays or rivers.

Behavior: Usually haul out on rocky reefs, gravel beaches; in some areas, may haul out on sandy beaches and onto sea ice in Bering Sea. For fear of losing harem of females, dominant mature males go hungry rather than leave territories during May-July breeding season to eat. Make roaring, lion-like noises.

Sportfishing (Rockfish)

Rockfish are a diversere and important group of marine fishes. Of 115 species of rockfish known world wide 97 of those can be found in the North Eastern Pacific. (In a range from Mexico to the Bering Sea). Their habitats vary in depth from very shallow tidal waters to thousands of feet deep. For that reason only about a dozen are within reach of hook and line fishers.

These fish are characterized by bony plates or spines on the head and body, a large mouth and pelvic fins attached forward near the pectoral fins. The spines are venomous and although not extremely toxic can still cause pain and infection. Some species are brightly colored and many others are difficult to distinguish from each other. Rockfishes are some what perch or bass-like in appearance and are often called seabass. All species have white flesh that is delicious to eat.

Also, rockfish have a type of swim bladder that uses a special gas-producing and absorbing gland to change the volume of gas in the swim bladder, which is used to maintain buoyancy at different depths in the water. This type of swim bladder is easily damaged when a fish is subjected to sudden changes in water pressure, such as when it is brought to the surface. The gas gland does not have enough time to absorb the gas in the swim bladder as the gas expands with a decrease in water pressure. Consequently, the swim bladder gets so large that it is too large for the fish's body cavity and it literally explodes out through the mouth of the rockfish. Countless rockfish are wasted when they are caught incidentally by fishers seeking other fish and are thrown back in the water.

Rockfish in our area can be divided into three ecological groups: shelf demersal, or those species that live in the nearshore, shallower waters, in rocky bottom areas shelf pelagic, or those species that also live mostly in the nearshore, shallower continental shelf waters, but that spend much of their time up in the water column and off the bottom, and slope, or those species that live in deeper waters, on the edge of the continental shelf.

Rockfish are extremely slow growing Rockfishes are slow-growing and extremely long-lived. Black rockfishes (Sebastes melanops), a common pelagic species, become sexually mature at about 10 years of age and have been aged to 40 years. Yelloweye rockfish( Sebastes ruberrimus), a shelf demersal rockfish, are a longer-lived species, becoming sexually mature around 15 years of age and living in excess of 100 years. There have been unconfirmed ages of fish at 114 years.

All rockfish, or species of the genus Sebastes, are ovoviviparous. This means that these fish give birth to live young after internal fertilization.

Food habits: Rockfish feed on a variety of food items. Juveniles eat primarily plankton, such as small crustaceans and copepods, as well as fish eggs. Larger rockfish eat fish such as sand lance, herring, and small rockfish, as well as crustaceans.

Species common to our area: Black, Blue, Quillback, Copper, Tiger Stripe, Vermilion, Canary, Yelloweye, Widow, Olive (or Yellowtail).

Yelloweye and Canary Rockfish are endangered and are not allowed to be retained.

More information to come on the other fisheries, Ling Cod, Halibut, Salmon, Tuna etc.

The Gray Whale

Coloration: Gray whales are so because of their mottled gray coloration. The natual pigmentation can range from almost black to almost white and can have spots that range from the size a marble to a basketball. This mottled appearance is enhanced by barnacles. barnacle scars, and whale lice.

Rostrum (Head): The rostrum extends from the tip of the snout to the blowholes a length of about 6 feet. The head area is covered with barnacles and whale lice. Gray whales that feed on the bottom rub off barnacles and leave barnacle scars. Young gray whales have a dimped rostrum with one hair in each dimple.

The most conspicuous identifying characteristics of gray whales are their size, distinctive mottled gray coloring, dorsal hump (no dorsal fin) and the knuckles along the back of the dorsal hump.
Gray whales range in size from 35-45 feet long and 30-40 tons, about the length of a school bus and the weight of ten elephants. Females weigh more and are longer than adult males.

Blow: The gray whales blow is about 6-10 feet high and is heart shaped if seen from behind on a calm day. About 100 gallons of air is expelled from the blow at speeds of 150-200 miles per hour.

Blowholes: Gray whales have two blowholes like all baleen whales.

Baleen Plates: There are 300 blonde colored baleen plates about one foot long that hang from the top jaw. Bristles on the inside edges of these plates trap food.

Throat Grooves: Two to five throat grooves on the bottom of the throat expand when the whales are feeding.

Flippers: Behind the throat grooves are pointed paddle shaped flippers.

Eyes: The eyes of the gray whale are brown in color and the size of an orange. The eyes are located at the end of the mouth line, 7-8 feet from the rostrum tip, gray whales have very good eyesight.

Dorsal Hump: Gray whales don't have a dorsal fin, instead they have a dorsal hump on the back.

Knuckles: 6-12 bumps called knuckles are seen behind the gray whales dorsal hump. In some whales these are very distinct and in others they are not. Sometimes the distance between each knuckle can help you identify individual gray whales.

Tail Fluke: An adults tail fluke is about 9 feet wide. Each fluke has a pattern which can help you identify individual whales.

Flukeprint: A large circle of smooth water formed by the tail fluke when the tail fluke goes under the surface for a dive.

Saturn

Saturn is a ball of hydrogen and helium gas wrapped around a dense, rocky core. Saturn spins so fast that it bulges outward at the equator, so the planet is much thicker at the equator than through the poles.

Saturn’s clouds are colored in subtle shades of yellow and tan. Saturn's rapid rotation and its layered structure produce a magnetic field. Observations by the Cassini spacecraft suggest that the field may be changing, which could mean that Saturn's interior is changing as well. Cassini monitored radio waves produced by the magnetic field as a way to measure Saturn's rotation rate. (Because Saturn has no solid surface, it's impossible to measure its rotation by tracking surface features like mountains or canyons.) But the craft found that the rotation rate appeared to have slowed by about six minutes since the Voyager missions two decades earlier. Scientists believe that Saturn is not actually slowing down. Instead, one possible explanation says that changes in the planet's core are creating changes in the magnetic field.

Saturn's clouds contain ammonia, methane, and other toxic compounds. They are buffeted by winds of up to 1,000 miles (1,600 km) per hour, and they contain violent storm systems that produce lightning blasts a million times more powerful than those on Earth.
Saturn's most prominent feature, though, is its extensive ring system.
Galileo Galilei discovered the rings in the early 17th century.

In his small, crude telescope, though, they looked like "bumps" on the side of the planet. Five decades later, Dutch astronomer Christaan Huygens, who had recently discovered Saturn's largest moon, Titan, detected a bit of space between Saturn and the bumps. He deduced that the bumps were really planet-circling rings.

Today, astronomers know that thousands of individual rings make up Saturn's ring system. Some rings are made of small bits of frozen water, others contain tiny grains of dust, and still others are a mixture of the two. In all, the rings are only a few hundred feet thick. Several small moons orbit inside or just outside the ring system. These "shepherd" satellites help keep the ring particles in place, but they also sculpt some rings into odd shapes, with twists and kinks.
Saturn's rings probably formed when a small moon or a comet passed close to Saturn and was pulled apart by the planet's gravity.

Although Saturn has no solid surface to stand on, humans may someday view its rings from close range. They may walk on some of its icy moons or even float above Saturn's clouds in big balloons. From such a lofty vantage point, the rings would form wide, sparkling bands across the sky. Sometimes, icy particles from the inner edge of Saturn's rings may fall into the planet's atmosphere, creating bright "shooting stars" as they streak through the sky of this delicate giant.

Astronomy (Sept. 15th and 16th 2009)

Venus, the “morning star,” is to the lower left of the Moon at first light on the 15th, with Mars above the Moon. Venus is close to the left of the Moon on the 16th. Regulus is to their lower left.

Leo, the Lion
The zodiacal constellation Leo, the lion, is one of a handful of constellations that really does look like its namesake. Look for Leo high in south in April and May.

Leo's brightest star is blue-white Regulus, one of the brightest stars in the night sky. Regulus rises almost due east, with the body of the lion following it into the sky over the next couple of hours. Once Regulus climbs into the sky, look to its left toward the north for a group of stars forming a backward question mark. These stars outline Leo's head and mane.

About two hours later, look low in the east for Leo's tail a white star named Denebola an Arabic name that, means "tail of the lion."

Astronomy (Sept. 13th and 14th 2009)

September 13-14, 2009
Mars rises just below the Moon on the morning of the 13th (around 1-2 a.m.), and a little farther above it on the 14th. Pollux and Castor, the twin stars of Gemini, align to the left of the Moon on the 14th.

Gemini, the Twins
Gemini is easy to find as it glides high overhead in mid-winter, above and to the left of Orion. It's two brightest stars Castor and Pollux represent the mythological twins brothers of Helen of Troy.

Many cultures have seen two humans in this star pattern marked by two roughly parallel lines of stars capped by two of the brightest stars in our night sky. But the legend that endures is that of Castor and Pollux. Gemini's two brightest stars bear the names of the twins.

Pollux is the brighter of the twins. It's an orange giant star that's about 35 light-years from Earth. Castor consists of six stars, a cosmic sextet locked in a gravitational ballet. This crowded system lies about 50 light-years from Earth.