Won’t you take me to finky town? Won’t you take me to finky town?
We had a once in a lifetime experience today with a Cow and Calf pair of FIN Whales! They mugged the boat as they crossed our stern and even circled our vessel a couple of times, getting wonderful looks from all areas off of the boat. It is truly such a gift to witness the brilliance of these large baleen whales. The fin whale calf stayed closely to its mother at all times. We also encountered a pod of ~100 long-beaked common dolphins. They were surfing in our wake and bow-riding up in front! We also experienced ideal sea conditions throughout the trip with sunny skies and calm blue water!
We had the BEST Sunset trip! 60 lucky passengers had a whale of a time! We set out of the Mission Bay jetties, and a single Inshore Bottlenose dolphin raced toward us to ride our wake! We continued on and a pod of ~30-40 Short-beaked Common dolphins were zooming around 3-miles from shore. We got to the drop-off and found thousands and thousands of Velella velella’s all around. There were a few Mola mola’s gulping at the surface feeding! We wanted to hang out a little longer but a tall, columnar spout caught our attention! The low angle of the sun as it sets, made it easy to spot the spouts! We had found the same cow/calf pair as earlier on the PM trip. The calf was being very curious and popped up in front of the bow, only 20-ft from us! On another occasion, a fluke print appeared only 10-ft from the port/left-side of the boat. The calf swam under our boat and popped up on the right side of the boat! Mother Fin whale seemed to let her calf explore, as it wasn’t always next to her calf! We had a beautiful sunset on the way home!
Naturalists,
Melissa & Vanessa
