How do Blue Whales pay for things like krill in the ocean? – with sand dollars! Just kidding, but looks like our blue whale friends are still in town feeding on the abundance of krill off of our coast in San Diego! Blue whales exclusively feed on krill. Krill are shrimp like crustaceans. On our morning trip, we started off with a bang! We saw some very interesting mating or birthing behavior from a small pod of ~5 inshore bottlenose dolphins. Not something we see everyday so everyone on the boat including Crew, we were all in shock! Then, we followed the birds which led us to a small pod of ~25 long-beaked common dolphins. We travelled south along the drop-off and encountered two massive blue whales! They were playing follow-the-leader. The two blue whales came up super close to the boat showing off their impressive spouts, majestic backs and tail flukes!
Our afternoon trip was also incredibly exciting!! Sunny skies and great sea conditions continued on throughout the day. We first spotted a spout from a blue whale around 6 miles offshore in about ~450 feet of water! It was behaving a little elusive and shy so we wished it Whale and headed up north towards La Jolla. We heard from our other whale watching friends there was some more activity up north. We encountered not only one but THREE blue whales! One of the blue whales was a little farther away from the boat about 1 1/2 miles away. However, the pair of blue whales popped up right next to our port bow!! We got incredibly close up looks and were really able to see their beautiful BLUE GLOW! A pod of ~50 long-beaked common dolphins also came up towards our boat whilst watching the blue whales. So lots of activity in just a small general area! We also encountered plenty of Mola-molas throughout the day about 4 each trip! There is so much life off of our coast in San Diego. We have another trip coming up so please stay tuned!
END OF THE DAY WHALE JACKPOT! We headed straight out west and found a MASSIVE gathering of blue whales. There were at least 6 in our vicinity that we could sight with our naked eye, even more off in the distance.
We got a fancy new fish finder not too long ago and MAN OH MAN! There’s SO MUCH KRILL hanging out on the drop off. There was a thick swarm hanging out from about ~300 ft – 500ft deep, a nearly 200 foot thick swarm of krill! No wonder all of these whales have returned to our waters.
We were lucky to have a “welcome to the ocean” pod of dolphins and “see ya next time” pod of dolphins on this trip too, two solid pods of long beaked common dolphins playing at our bow and surrounding the whole boat. The grand finale was the gorgeous sunset!
We’ll be back in force tomorrow! Can’t wait to see what new adventures await!
Naturalist,
Melissa & Alison
