(Photo by Stacey J. Byers) It sounds like a question my daughter would ask me: “What’s your favorite whale?”  Still, I couldn’t help myself, after all, Hiroko Benko has seen them all. Well, not quite, as there are around 90 species of cetaceans – whales, dolphins, and porpoises – swimming around the world’s oceans and not all of them can be spotted in the Santa Barbara Channel. But a heckuva lot of them can be, including Blue Whales (the world’s largest creature ever), Grays, Minke, Sperm, Humpback, Killer Whales, and a variety of dolphins. About 27 species traverse the Santa [...more...]