The Whalenerd‘s Podcast

Our first special guest was Kate Cummings! She is the owner and operator of Blue Ocean Whale Watch in Moss Landing, CA. Kate was one of the passengers on the recent Cheeseman's Ecology Safaris trip to Antarctica! She gave us an excellent report about her two week trip where she saw whales, penguins, pinnipeds, and lots of ice!  We were so jealous after listening to her report! She had an excellent...

Katlyn just got back from Baja yesterday! She gave a report about all the logistics of the trip and all the whales she saw! Yes, she did get to pet a gray whale. San Ignacio lagoon was incredible! Meanwhile, Slater and Eric had an absolutely insane week in Monterey! Humpbacks had already been coming in to the bay before Katlyn left, but they have settled in and really been feeding all week!. There...

We started off this episode talking about lone male killer whales. That conversation led us to a broader conversation about killer whale social groups and defining Bigg's / transient killer whales.  Then we answered a question about comparing whale sizes to everyday objects. For example, a humpback whale is the same length as a school bus! We also talked about recent whale sightings in California....

Slater gave us a recap of his incredible trip to Baja. He was able to swim with whale sharks and  California sea lions on the same day! He also had two days with friendly gray whales and Frigate birds. There was also a sea turtle research project that the trip participants were able to assist with for green sea turtles.  We also gave a run down of a few recent whale new items. The man who got swal...

Eric and Katlyn gave a quick recap of a Friend's of Hopkins event last week with Ray Troll. He spoke about his new book that he illustrated about fossils on the West Coast of North America. Katlyn also attended an art and science event at Moss Landing Marine Labs last week that she gave a quick summary about. We shared some recent whale news from this week. The first story was about the sighting o...

Eric gave us a report of the screening of the movie Scars from the ACS LA meeting this week. Slater and Katlyn gave a recap of the ACS Monterey Bay meeting which was a talk about Pacific Walrus. We also answered two questions from our instagram followers. The first one was about interspecies interactions between cetaceans and non cetaceans - we threw in some leatherback sea turtle info too! The se...

We took more questions from our instagram followers! Thanks for sending those in to us. We weighed in on the Orca vs Killer Whale naming debate to get this episode started! We had a great question about the current status of ship strikes and entanglements for large whales as well. We also addressed some topics that we get asked frequently about photography and how to best prepare for a whale watch...

In this episode we talked about how we all got our start in the whale realm. We all currently work in the whale watch industry in Monterey, but none of us started there! Listen in on how we all ended up in the industry and how we got to Monterey. We hope this episode inspires you to follow your passions too! We have been loving all your questions and topic suggestions - keep sending them our way....

We had more questions from Instagram for this episode! We started things off with your questions about whale lifespans, pilot whales in California and where to watch Killer Whales. Thanks for sending those in! It's super fun to hear your inquiries. After answering some questions, we chatted about our favorite whale movies and books! We are also building up a resource list on our site so you can ac...

We decided to start things off with questions from you! Thanks for sending in questions through our Instagram story this week! Keep the topic suggestions and questions coming in. Things started off with our favorite whales and went down the rabbit hole from there! We did a fun lightning round about things we have seen that we thought the other co-hosts had not seen. Animals included: whales, dolph...

As we mentioned at the end of Episode 4 - here are the weird whale facts! We went through as many lesser known whale facts as we could think of in this episode. We covered narwhal tusks, ambergris, whale lice, barnacles and so much more! This episode was super fun and we definitely have more fun whale facts to talk about in future episode too.  Have some whale facts you would like us to talk about...

We went wayyyy back for this one. Slater and Katlyn have been listening to a book about whales but written from a paleontologist's point of view. This inspired us to talk about how whales started as mammals on land and went back to the water. Eric dropped some fossil knowledge on us about where to find marine fossils in California and look at them in museums too. We also meandered our way through...

We made a new version of episode 3! Thanks for sticking with us through the technical difficulties - we are still learning!  We changed gears for the topics - we will circle back to the land based whale watching conversation in a future podcast. This time we started off talking about the difference between mysticetes and odontocetes and things got more specific from there. Topics shifted to whale...

This week Eric and Katlyn gave a recap of the Southern California Marine Mammal Workshop to start off the episode. We also heard from Eric about his recent trip to Florida to swim with Manatees. We also took a question from one of our followers about rare sightings in California / Eastern North Pacific. Follow us @whalenerds on instagram

Episode 1 - Whale watching in California and the gray whale migration. We talked about whale watching up and down the California coast based on our experiences in the field. We each gave our perspective on the gray whale migration along the coast and how it varies by location during the north and southbound journeys.  Meet the hosts! Katlyn Taylor - Marine Biologist Eric Austin Yee - Marine Biolog...