June 23, 2023
You ever have days so good you’re actually at a loss for words? Today was definitely one of those!
Our morning trip had a feeding frenzy of long beaked common dolphins right out of the jetties! Tons of dolphins, and tons of babies! Little nerf balls of magic whizzing through the ocean everywhere!
The conditions are still a little rough so it took a a while to locate a blue whale but we did; and BOY OH BOY was it special! One of the pair of whales we found came up RIGHT IN FRONT OF US!
We’ve got a group of scientists in the area tagging blue whales in hopes to learn a bit more about these gentle giants lives when they’re not off of our coastline. (They’re still largely [no pun intended] a mystery.) We got some cool looks at the orange suction cup tags that the scientists are using.
The second trip of the day was also greeted with a large pod of common dolphins and we were able to hear their cacophony of squeaks and clicks as they used their echo location.
We also ran into a baby loggerhead sea turtle! This was especially exciting for us because we so rarely see sea turtles out in the open ocean in San Diego! Captain Ryan did a great job driving our large boat nimbly around the turtle so as not to spook it! We found Blue whales on this trip as well! They were a bit shy on this trip but we still managed to get some good looks!
The Sunset trip was beautiful! We encountered a single Blue whale circling around near the drop off! We watched its huge spouts highlighted in the sunlight. We watched it surface for 10 or so breaths and go down for 10 to 14-min dives. We could see its turquoise-blue glow as it swam near the surface. We got a glimpse of a rainblow too! The sunset was gorgeous!
The pacific is teaming with life right now!
We hope to see you all soon!
GET OUT HERE!
It’s been endless magic.
Naturalist,
Alison 
