What a great way to finish off our 2017 Spring Watch Week.

Hope you had sunglasses today! We had a beautiful day all day today along the coast with hundreds of whales sighted. Over 300 in fact!

We will be compiling the week’s numbers and posting our final tally next week.

Thank you to all of the volunteers who made this great week happen!!!

-WWSH

We’re back!

Well yesterday, 3/29, is a day most of us won’t remember. Rain, wind, and some more rain. Very few whales spotted and many stations had to stop looking early due to the horrendous weather conditions.

Today, we’re back on the whale train!

Numbers are still coming in, but several sites saw over 20 whales today. We still had a mix of sun and rain showers but overall it was a much better day!

At the Depoe Bay Whale Center we saw 11 whales and 3 of them decided to breach for us! It was a great day of whale watching on the central coast!

See you tomorrow!

WWSH

Well, it was a pretty rough day for whale watching along much of the Oregon coast. Most of us had sustained winds of over 20mph and swells of 10-15 feet for most of the day. Like we say at the Whale Center, its hard to see a 10 foot spout behind a 15 foot wall of water!

Harris Beach and Cape Ferrelo both saw 18, while most of the rest of us saw fewer than 5.

We only saw 4 whales all day at the Whale Center in Depoe Bay, but the last one breached 6 times! A few lucky, patient, visitors got to see it live, and for the rest of us, we can watch it on the YouTube replay! The breaches happen 30 minutes before the end of the video.

-WWSH

Good weather and decent ocean conditions returned and so did our whale sightings.

Over 300 whales have been seen today by our amazing group of volunteers! Sounds like many folks had some really active whales too!  Many locations reported breaches and other fun behavior.

Highest numbers of sightings were on the central coast averaging in the mid 20’s to low 40’s.

See you tomorrow!

WWSH

Well it got a little rainy as the day progressed but we still managed about 100 whales state wide.

Up north was the best bet today with Cape Disappointment spotting 18 gray whales.

We managed 8 here in Depoe Bay at the Whale Center, but it looks like one of our summer whales has returned. It fed 50ft from shore in front of the visitor center for about an hour!

We’ll be out there again tomorrow rain or shine!

if you haven’t yet, be sure to checkout our live YouTube stream. Today we had people from all across the globe helping us count whales!

https://www.youtube.com/user/OregonParks

See you tomorrow!

WWSH

There’s no easy way to say this but… we saw almost 500 whales today ! 🙂 It was an excellent day for whale watching here along the Oregon coast and thousands of people spoke with our volunteers.

A few reports of breaches but mostly some great spouts and flukes.

Final numbers are still coming in, I’ll update in the morning!

See you tomorrow.

UPDATE:   508 whales seen.

Over 3000 visitors contacted by the WWSH volunteers. Great job everyone!

-wwsh

We’re putting the final touches on what is shaping up to be a great Spring Whale Watch Week!

There have been whales spotted from Depoe Bay every day for the last week and the trend should continue everywhere along the coast!

Volunteers will be stationed starting tomorrow from 10AM – 1PM at the 24 locations, and we had a last-minute addition.  If you’re visiting Fort Stevens State Park, be sure to head to the Peter Iredale Shipwreck parking lot to meet some of our amazing WWSH volunteers and look for these whales!

-WWSH

As the Winter Whale Watch Week came to a close we had one of the busiest weeks on record in terms of humans. The official tally is still coming in but already our volunteers have reported making contact with over 13,000 people coast-wide who wanted to learn more about these magnificent animals!

The wind and waves made this year’s viewing some of the most difficult in recent memory, but our volunteers stuck it out through everything and made this winter a huge success! Thank you everyone for your help and we are looking forward to the Spring Watch Week March 25th – 31st, 2017!

Look for the final tally of humans and whales later this week.

-The WWSH team.

We had another great day of whale watching today!  From the calls coming in, it sounded fairly consistent that we all had a calm windless morning and a windy afternoon.  Its adds a lot of difficulty to whale watching by throwing wind and whitecaps in the mix.  Thank you to all of our wonderful volunteers that collectively saw 216 whales and made contact with almost 2000 people today!

Top 5

Neahkahnie Mtn./Inn at Spanish Head/Cooks Chasm  21 whales

Cape Lookout   20 whales

Don Davis    19 whales

We had another great day of whale watching along the central coast.  The clouds stayed off shore and the wind was very little.  Our Volunteers to the north and south were not quite so lucky.  They both were dealing with low visibility due to fog, but most sites were still able to at least see one whale.  Thank you to all of you wonderful Volunteers for being out there and helping people learn about whales even when the weather is not helping.

Top 5

Depoe Bay Whale Center      21 Whales

Devil’s Punchbowl                  19 Whales

Depoe Bay Sea Wall                 15 Whales

Boiler Bay                                    16 Whales

Yaquina Head/Don Davis        13 Whales