The day was spent watching three different species of toothed whale and one baleen whale! We spotted both Long-beaked and Short-beaked Common dolphins on both of our morning and afternoon tours! We had small pods of 30 to 50 in each pod pop up around us as they traveled along the coast. They were so fun to watch as they raced toward us to hang out. They surfed in our wake and rode the bow. We encountered two huge pods of 400 individuals of each species! They spanned a mile long in some instances. We loved to watch the cow/calf pairs surfacing next to our boat! We caught up with a single Minke whale INside of the drop-off. It was cruising around, likely feeding. We observed a bait ball with diving birds near the Minke. We also sighted ~15 inshore bottlenose dolphins at the mouth of the jetties on our afternoon trip.
We had a lovely sunset trip today with great sea conditions and amazing visibility! We saw several scattered pods of long-beaked common dolphins throughout our trip, about ~250 LB common dolphins in total. They were displaying interesting feeding behavior as they swam upside down and trapped prey between their tummies and the surface of the water. We also saw 2 Mola-molas!
Naturalist,
Vanessa and Melissa
