We had an awesome day full of Long-beaked and Short-beaked Common dolphins!
On the morning trip, we cruised out and found a fun pod of ~200 Long-beaked Common dolphin traveling from the west to the east. The seas were smooth and glassy which made for some amazing viewing! We could see them looking up at us! They were people watching! We continued to the north along hte drop off and caught up with at least 6 more pods of Long-beaks, giving us a grand total of ~400 Long-beaks over the trip. We loved to see the babies zipping around us!
On today’s overflow trip, we traveled out west and encountered 3 separate pods of dolphriends! Our first pod consisted of ~30 long-beaked common dolphins! We found them just outside of the jetties! They escorted us out to sea. Our second pod consisted of ~120 long-beaked common dolphins! They were being very curious and surfed alongside our boat for a good amount of time! We found our third pod around ~7 miles offshore in about ~1200ft of water! This pod was absolutely massive, consisted of about ~450 short-beaked common dolphins! They were leaping out of the water and doing silly belly flops! Never a dull moment on the Ohana, please join us soon!
On the afternoon trip, we encountered a pod of ~75 Long-beaked Common dolphins! They were exciting to see so many approach the boat at once! They zoomed straight for the bow and the wake! Plenty of cow/calf pairs for everyone to scream about! We pushed out to the NW and found a stampede of ~500 Short-beaked Common dolphins! They were headed straight for us! We caught up with them and they separated into 2 pods. They breached porpoised, tail-slapped and rocketed out of the ocean! We enjoyed the smooth seas on the way in!
This evening we decided to start searching out west to go looking in some different places than we had been earlier in the day, we were rewarded with a pod of about ~40 bottlenose that appeared to be feeding just outside the drop off. The had so many young dolphins with them in this pod, they were fun to play “I Spy” with. After many good looks and loads of bottnose mischief – we took off in search of other wildlife. Just as we were starting to worry, the sun nearing the horizon, light slipping out of our grasps – we spotted another pod of dolphin! This time we found ~ 200 shorties! These short beaked commons were on a mission , also hunting small bait fish. There was a cloud of Terns over them taking turns plummeting into the water For a fresh catch.
We have one more trip left, stay tuned for updates!
Naturalists,
Vanessa, Melissa & Alison
