Summertime, and the livin’s easy.
SURF:
Amazing weather this past week and water temps hovering around 70 to boot. Today we’ll have great weather again (when this new batch of low clouds burn off mid-morning) and a slight bump in SW swell for waist-chest waves in SD and shoulder high waves in the OC.
Saturday picks up another foot and Sunday should be head high with best spots in the OC going overhead. Nothing big but plenty fun. We also have some winds in the outer waters today so we should have NW windswell to cross up the SW lines and peaks at the beach breaks. The weather unfortunately is getting back to normal this weekend and we’ll have low clouds/fog in the morning and cooler hazy afternoon sunshine. Water temps dropped slightly overnight- not much- but are now hovering around 68 while a couple days ago they were 72. No big deal- all in all is should be a fun weekend of surf with typical summer weather. Tides the next few days are 3’ at sunrise, 1’ mid-morning, 5.5’ at 5pm, and 3’ at sunset. Make sure to keep up to date on the waves and weather at Twitter/North County Surf.
FORECAST:
After a fun weekend of SW/NW surf, the SW fills in further on holds Monday and the NW windswell backs off slightly for chest high waves in south SD, head high waves in north SD, and overhead surf in the OC. The return of low clouds/fog in the nights/mornings are forecasted to return so temps will be a little cooler at the beaches but at least we have waves. The SW surf should slowly drop through the week while we have small background NW windswell. 
Looks small by late next week but models show more activity in the south Pacific so keep your fingers crossed for more SW late in the weekend.
On a side note, the tropics are active again and we’ve got our 3rd named storm of the season- Calvin. The National Hurricane Center doesn’t think highly of it as their forecast keeps it as a tropical storm- not even a hurricane. AND it’s supposed to die before it hits our swell window! Hopefully I’m wrong, so make sure to keep up to date on the storm at Twitter/North County Surf.
WEATHER:
Can’t beat a week of 80 degree temps, mild sea breezes, and humidity like it was Hawaii. We get a return of low clouds today but it should burn off quickly to temps in the high 70’s along with humidity again. Kind of a carbon copy tomorrow and then we start to get back to our normal summer pattern as a trough sets up along the west coast. Look for temps to drop to the low 70’s with morning low clouds and fog burning off to hazy afternoon sunshine on Sunday with less humidity. Models show the trough hanging around for awhile, so we may get low clouds/fog past next weekend with temps in the low 70’s at the beaches for the next 10 days at least.BEST BET:
Should be a fun weekend of surf but I’m claiming Monday- even though we get cooler beach temps and low clouds/fog returning in the nights and mornings, we do get a peaking head high+ SW swell with NW windswell for wedges at the beachbreaks. NEWS OF THE WEEK:
Not like I really want to help sharks out or anything, but since they’re a big part of the marine ecosystem, we’re starting to lose them at an alarming rate. One such mystery is the basking shark; the world’s 2nd largest known fish and one that has largely disappeared off the California coast. The San Diego Union Tribune did an article recently about the efforts of the National Marine Fisheries Service to locate them. Personally I don’t want to find them as I have enough fear of sharks, but since their existence relates to the health of the oceans, maybe I should keep an eye out for them...
It’s the equivalent of the FBI’s most wanted notices — a dragnet by marine researchers to locate and track the world’s second-largest known fish off the coast of California. “Have you seen this shark?” asks a poster being distributed at marinas, dive shops, docks and other spots from San Diego to Monterey by the local office of the National Marine Fisheries Service. The agency also is handing out wallet-sized photo ID cards along the waterfront and running an Internet campaign asking for the public’s help. The creature in question is the basking shark, one of roughly 400 known shark species and one that largely has disappeared on the West Coast. Two have been spotted and rigged with electronic tracking devices by federal researchers along the San Diego County coastline in the past few months — lucky finds that should increase knowledge about the species in the Pacific Ocean. Researchers at the National Marine Fisheries Service are seeking information, including photos and videos, about basking shark sightings along the West Coast. The “gentle giants” don’t eat people even though their gaping mouths look like they could swallow humans whole. Instead, they filter-feed on a type of zooplankton called copepods in quantities large enough to sustain frames that can grow up to 40 feet. “Basking sharks actually used to be a much more regular part of the local fauna,” said Heidi Dewar at the federal Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla. “Since the mid-1900s, we are lucky if we see any at all. ... You kind of forget that they are supposed to be here.” The California Current, a ribbon of south-flowing water along the West Coast, is among the world’s most productive marine zones, and recent studies have highlighted the need to better understand and better manage the ecosystem. Scientists say it’s under threat from climate change, fishing and pollution, but they still lack lots of basic information — for instance, about the basking shark. Last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration listed it as a species of concern based on the rarity of sightings in the Pacific. Schools of hundreds or thousands were reported early 1900s off the coasts of California and Canada, but basking sharks were fished and hunted to the point where no more than three at a time have been spotted in California since 1993. In places, the sharks have been commercially important as a source of food, fins and liver oil. Decades ago, Canadians were particularly aggressive about killing basking sharks with a device called a “razor-billed shark slasher” because the animals got tangled in salmon nets and threatened a critical industry. Canadians also have helped revive interest in the species and are working with Scripps, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and scientists from Mexico to better understand why the species has not rebounded despite decades of little direct human pressure. Biologists think there may be as few as 300 along the West Coast, one of the many items they are trying to get a handle on with the tracking effort by Dewar and her colleagues, John Hyde and Owyn Snodgrass. It’s tedious work that researchers call “mowing the lawn” — trolling back and forth across the waves for hours in hopes of spotting a triangular fin that can be three feet tall. “There are a lot of times when you go out and look at the ocean and you never see a thing,” Hyde said. As the name implies, basking sharks tend to hang out close to the surface in nearshore waters. As word spreads about federal interest, the fisheries service is getting more tips about sightings. That allows Hyde and Snodgrass to search areas where the species was last seen. “Ideally, we’d like somebody to call us from the water and say there are five of them in front of my boat and we’d probably drop everything to get there,” Hyde said. Even with tips, finding the creatures is tough because they only need to descend a few feet to disappear. Hyde and Snodgrass placed the first-ever tag on a basking shark in the Pacific Ocean last year near Point Loma and added two more this spring, one off Del Mar and another near Imperial Beach. Once the fish are found, it’s relatively easy to anchor the monitoring device at the base of the dorsal fin. “We have been able to slowly idle up next to them and they don’t care one bit,” Hyde said. “They are very cooperative.” He suspects that demeanor may be responsible for some shark deaths because they are likely too nonchalant to dodge vessels. Satellite tags not only show the movements of basking sharks but they help to show how oceanography influences where they go and what they do. For instance, tags regularly record temperature and depth, allowing scientists a look at how they use the marine habitat. Last year’s data showed that the shark tagged off San Diego moved northwest to the Channel Islands and finally to Morro Bay where the tag dropped off. The temperature and depth data suggest the creature dove deeper than 1,500 feet. But with so little information, the species’ larger patterns of movement are still anyone’s guess. “We really have no idea if they are swimming across to Japan or Russia, or if they are heading down to Ecuador,” Dewar said, adding that such information is critical for any sort of conservation strategy. Hyde also is interested in the shark’s genetics, in part because it’s not clear that the Pacific variety is the same as its better-known relatives in the Atlantic. That’s where the public outreach campaign comes into play. “We are really trying to maximize the eyes on the water ... because we can’t cover the areas necessary to effectively survey them,” Dewar said. For more information, check out the article here.
BEST OF THE BLOG:
Seriously- do you really want to read any more stories about evil moms on trial or what the royals are up to in Canada?! Take a load off your mind and check out the following: the latest surf checks, Jordy hanging with super models in the Maldives, some of the best contest surf you’ve ever seen, or saving you some $$$ on surf tees. Make sure to all that out and more in the blog below!PIC OF THE WEEK:
Keep Surfing,
Michael W. Glenn
MarvelousHosting Dinner For Will and Kate Saturday
Have A 68% Win Rate Vs. Charlie Kuhn
