June has been SO good to us this blue whale season! Our morning trip headed out about 9.5 miles from Mission Bay and found 4 blue whales! They were definitely in travel mode out to the west but we got as many looks as we could. We got really good looks at one as it stayed close to our left side and showed off it’s tail fluke! Our afternoon trip was even better. We started strong seeing about 50 long beaked common dolphins about a mile from shore. There were a couple babies in the group and a few came right up to our bow! We travelled about 7 miles out and found 6 more blue whales! We had another one show off it’s tail fluke as well and a different whale came super close to us on our right side. We finished strong with some inshore bottlenose dolphins welcoming us back to Mission Bay. For our sunset trip we got out to the drop off and encountered easily 10+ blue whales! It was absolutely epic. All of them were within a mile of each other. We also didn’t have to go anywhere for dolphins either, they pretty much came to us. We were able to cruise north with a pod of around 300 long-beaked common dolphins with lots of babies. We then came back to the blue whale zone again before making our way in and encountered another smaller pod of common dolphins coming back.
Naturalist,
Brooke and Ryan
