What did the blue whale say on Thursday? “Just keep swimming, the weekend is almost here!” We absolutely krilled it today! We had great sightings all day long! On our morning trip, we saw three separate pods of long-beaked common dolphins. We estimated each pod consisted of about ~100 individual dolphins, so roughly ~300 long-beaks found throughout the trip! We travelled all the way to the west-end of the 9-mile bank, about 12 miles offshore and encountered one spout which led us to seeing 5 Blue whales! We also saw a COW/ CALF pair of BLUE WHALES! The baby blue whale was swimming closely alongside their mom. The mama blue whale lifted her tail flukes so high! It almost looked like a vertical dive! We also saw a Mako shark and two California sea lions.
On our afternoon trip, we went back to the 9-mile bank! The beginning of our trip was a bit quiet. However, once we got to our hot spot zone around ~12 miles offshore, we encountered the same aggregation of blue whales! Blue whales are solitary creatures so seeing more than one in a general area is super rare! Their strongest social bond is between a mother and her calf. The baby blue whale from this morning was being absolutely adorable this afternoon. The mom was also incredibly majestic and massive! For baleen whales, such as blue whales and humpbacks, females are larger than males. The three adult blue whales also came up super close to our boat! At one point we were sandwiched between blue whales, on our port and starboard side! Once we peeled off, we quickly encountered a massive pod of ~200 short-beaked common dolphins! They were launching out of the water and creating massive splashes! They dolphinitely gave us a show!! Never a dull moment out on the water, please join us soon for some salty summer fun on the Privateer!
Naturalist,
Melissa
