Thursday, April 11, 2024
We had an action packed trip with a Gray whale cow/calf pair, a Fin whale, and Common dolphins sighted! We set out of Mission Bay and caught up with a fast moving pod of ~80 Long-beaked Common dolphins! They were traveling north about a mile from shore. We continued on and spotted a short puffy spout just inside the drop-off. It was a northbound Gray whale cow/calf pair! The Gray whale calf was swimming in mom’s slipstream and would surface about 3x more than the mom. We noticed the pair began to travel toward the coast, and the mom lifted her tail and waved goodbye! We continued to the SW and spotted a huge columnar spout that belonged to a Fin whale! It was circling in ~750 feet of water, likely feeding. We continued home and spotted a small pod of ~20 Short-beaked Common dolphins plus more Long-beaks!
We saw Long-beaks galore during our sunset trip. We sighted two separate pods of ~50 long-beaked common dolphins. We also sighted a spout about 4 miles away through the binoculars. It was a very tall columnar spout which was illuminated by the sunset. Unfortunately, we couldn’t relocate the spout once we were in the general area. Therefore, we will call it a mystery whale for now. However, based on the size and shape of the spout we are speculating that it could have been another Fin whale! We were blessed with calm sea conditions throughout the entire trip! Looking forward to finding more SEAtaceans in the coming days!
Naturalist,
Vanessa & Melissa
