We had the BEST BLUE WHALE DAY EVER!
On our morning trip, we left the Mission Bay jetties and spotted spouts only a few miles from shore! We observed to single Blue whales in only 200-ft of water! Then we noticed a cow/calf pair of Blue whales that were so amazing to see! We even got to babysit the Blue whale calf! For about 30-min we had the engines off and watched in awe as the calf zoomed around our boat, non-stop! The calf went under our boat, popped up behind us. The mother Blue whale seemed to be off in shallower water likely feeding. We saw mom surface and baby took off toward her and it was so cool to see them reunite after a long dive. We caught up with two pods of Long-beaked Common dolphins totally 300 or so!
We had a great afternoon trip as well! We saw a Gray whale in Mission bay off of Mariner’s Point! Not 5-min from the dock, we saw our first whale! It was so exciting! We continued out and spotted a single Blue whale in 150-ft of water again! It circled the area and was down for only about 6-min dives. We left it behind and got out to the drop-off as there were thousands of birds diving in the water! And it was just a matter of time before a Blue whale popped up in the mix! It seemed to be in resting mode, as it hung out just beneath the ocean for about 5min and then would come to the surface for a breath. We could see its beautiful Blue glow! We said goodbye and when we were about to head in, we spotted a big pod of ~50 Offshore Bottlenose dolphins! It was a nursery pod with lots of little calves in the mix! One calf breached a bunch of times and splashed the passengers on the bow!
Sunset trip carried the energy of the day through all the way until the end!
Further off shore but not out of reach, we headed south to check out a group of whales called into us by our friends over at Gone Whale Watching – and man oh man was it a jackpot! We were absolutely surrounded by at least 10 blue whales, 5 of which we got to see pretty close up, 3 of which showed their flukes! We were gifted with another spectacular sunset – rays of light sending dancing columns of gold onto the the glimmering ocean.
Naturalist,
Vanessa & Alison
