During the morning trip, we left the Mission Bay jetties and a pod of ~50 Long-beaked Common dolphins were feeding under some diving birds. We noticed there were a lot of cow/calf pairs in the mix. We continued out to deeper water, picked up a few Mylar balloons and were treated to multiple baleen whales! Our first sighting was a Fin whale traveling slowly to the south. We spotted numerous spouts to the north and most of them were Blue whales! We even got to see their beautiful tails! We had a big pod of ~100 Long-beaked Common dolphins cruise by us while we watched the Blues. We encountered a handful of Mola mola’s and thousands of Velella velella’s too.
On our afternoon trip we made our way out to the drop-off where we encountered TWO Blue whales! We got to see their massive spouts, hearing them was thrilling! One of the whales consistently lifted its fluke while the other did not. We watched them for a few cycles before searching for other wildlife. We spotted birds on our way back towards the coast and ended up finding a pod of Long-beaked Common dolphins. They played in our wake and put out a show porpoising out of the water! The conditions were beautiful, hope you can join us soon!
Naturalists,
Vanessa & Danielle
