We sighted 4 Gray whales and ~300 Long-beaked Common dolphins today! During the morning tour, we set out to the north, along the coast. Off of Bird Rock, we sighted a single spout! When we got to about 1/3 mile from the whale, it BREACHED, TWICE! We were stoked! We hoped for more surface activity, but it fell into a nice slow travel mode to the south. We observed spouts, its back and its tail on almost every dive. We zoomed out to the SW and caught up with a big pod of ~300 Common dolphins that were headed south. Once we finally caught up with them, they began to ride the bow and surf our wake! During our afternoon cruise, we didn’t have to go very far to find whales! A trio popped up in front of us! They were slowly traveling to the south. We watched as they came up every 4-min, and had 2 to 3 spouts at the surface. They seemed to come up one right after another, and a few times, synchronized their breaths. We got great looks as one of them kind of lifted its head out of the water a little to take a peek at us. Whale tails were lifted on almost every dive. One whale turned to its side at the surface, so we could see 1/2 of its flukes. We think it swam upside down briefly! On our way in to Mission Bay, we sighted about 4 Inshore Bottlenose dolphins. It was a windy day on the water! White caps were everywhere!

Hope to see you on the next one!
Naturalist,
Vanessa