Announcements and Reminders
Jo announced there is a party on December 10th at 8:00 in Whole Foods Capitola.
Laura and Doug are our Rotarians of the week for getting our grant requests in and accepted!
The Rotary International dinner for our district is on January 3rd. It is $125 and is at 6:00 at the Double Tree Inn in San Jose. See Win to sign up.
For board members, remember the board meeting on the 14th.
Keith’s party is on the 10th. Please share a ride if you can.
UCSC Rotaract students are fundraising for Digital Nest and Jacobs Heart. We are invited to join with them to help raise money for these two causes. They will keep us informed as to time and place.
Taylor Brevis from Jimmy Panetta’s office updated us on the news from Washington.
Marine biologist Doris Welch from Sanctuary Cruises was our speaker today. They do whale watching trips on the Monterey Bay. She began her work at Long Marine Lab but left to do sanctuary cruises.
She pointed out that everything is protected in our national marine sanctuary area from San Francisco to Cambria. Our whales have made an incredible comeback. Humpback whales especially have come back in big numbers.
Ms Welch showed us interesting slides of rhesus dolphins and whales. We have six different species of dolphins and two species of porpoises. We saw nursing mothers, orca whales and grey whales surfacing for air. They are very good divers they can conserve oxygen for up to an hour.
The tail is called the fluke and is for propulsion and they have nostrils on the top of their head (blowhole). They have other sensory organs on the whiskers on their chin. They hear through their lower jaws and it transmits up to the inner ear. They send out high frequency clicks and listen to the echoes.
Baleen whales have no teeth, but have a plate that they can filter feed with. They feed 24 hours and eat any fish they can get such as anchovies and krill.
Ms Welch told us that there has been a special occurrence in the past two weeks. We have had 80 foot long blue whales in the Monterey Bay, an indicator that the population is going up.
For more information or to make a reservation for a tour, go to www.sanctuarycruises.com or (831) 350-4090.