Gorgeous seas, Common dolphins galore, and Blue whales!
On the morning tour, we set out to the SW and cruised over smooth glassy seas. We sighted an 2 Mola molas on the drop-off! We had great looks as the glassy seas made it easy to see their big lips and googly eyes! Not too far, was a small pod of ~7-10 Long-beaked Commons. They split up into two subgroups and circled around the boat. We made it to the 9-mile bank, and then headed north. We found another bigger pod of ~200 Long-beaked Common dolphins feeding under diving birds! They were seen all around us breaching and surfing our wake! We found lots of babies in the mix. We spotted 4 more smaller pods of Long-beaked Common dolphins on our way back in!
We switched things up a bit for our afternoon trip, and went west. We found a huge pod of ~700 Long-beaked Common dolphins hanging out on the drop-off! There pod spanned about a mile long! Seabirds were seen diving around them. We got great looks as they bow-rode the boat and surfed our wake! We continued a little further and caught up with a single Blue whale! It was traveling to the west with 10-min dive times. We spotted another Blue to the west of us so we caught up with it and stayed up at the surface for a really long time with at least 20 breaths witnessed, compared to 3-7 breaths on an average breath cycle. We began to leave for home, when a cow/calf pair surprised us! We even got the best looks at mom’s beautiful tail flukes! Then another surprise Fin whale popped up nearby! We found the whale zone!
We have a sunset trip soon, we will update you on our activity tonight!
Naturalist,
Vanessa
