Thursday, June 6, 2024
We had some Blue-tiful whales on both trips today! On the morning tour, as soon as we left the Mission Bay jetties, we sighted a huge pod of ~200 Long-beaked Common dolphins feeding under diving birds! You could see the small schooling fish jumping out of the water! We cruised up the north and enjoyed the coastline sights! We spotted 5-6 Blue whales in La Jolla! They were circling the area, with great views of a cow/calf pair! We even got to see tail flukes on almost every sounding dive! To the north of us, a huge pod of ~400 Short-beaked Common dolphins racing to the south. The water was glassy and it made for some amazing views of the social dolphins! Lots of babies were jumping out of the water with breaches and big leaps from the adults!
On the afternoon tour, the fun didn’t stop! We went north again, and found another big pod of ~200 Long-beaked Common dolphins traveling south. They were seen feeding all around us! We got great looks as they surfed in our wake and bow-rode the boat! We continued up the coast and found big Blue whale spouts! We hung out with one, while 3 more surface closer to the coast! We noticed the same cow/calf pair was hanging out with another single whale. The first Blue whale exhalation after a long deep dive is so LOUD! You can feel it in your chest! It was so cool to hear it as it popped up pretty close to our boat! We got some amazing looks with La Jolla and Torrey Pines as the background!
On our sunset trip, we were able to fully experience and understand the circle of life! We headed up northwest towards La Jolla and saw lots of bird activity! Captain John spotted an interesting looking dorsal fin and harbor seal underneath the birds! After a closer look, we were able to determine that it was a shark actively hunting their prey. By the looks of the dorsal fin, the shark was most likely a Mako shark. After we peeled off, we headed up further north and encountered the same cow/calf pair of blue whales! We saw it come up to the surface several times! After we said goodbye to the cow/calf pair of blue whales, we encountered another blue whale! So we saw 3 blue whales in total!
Naturalist,
Vanessa & Melissa
