We hung out with a Juvenile Humpback whale that was playing in the Kelp forest in 68-ft of water!!
We planned to head to deeper water but were pleasantly surprised to catch up with a single Humpback whale milling around only a mile or so outside of Sunset Cliffs! It had 14-min dive times, and came up for a few breaths, flipping up its beautiful tail each time it went down for a sounding dive! We pushed out to the about 3-miles from shore and caught up with a huge pod of ~300 Long-beaked Common dolphin! They were separated into 4 to 5 subgroups where they fed on huge bait balls of northern anchovies! There were at least a thousand shearwaters of many varieties, among other birds all around! It was an amazing feeding frenzy! We even caught one Common dolphin playing with some sea grass and passing it off to another! (See pic) We heard there was a second larger Humpback sighted with the juvenile, so we went back and got a quick look! We ran out of time, so we zoomed home only a couple of miles from home.
On the afternoon trip, we went straight to the Humpback whale! Little did we know we were in for a special encounter! We waited for the whale to pop up for breaths and seemed to have similar behavior as before, but then we got the best view! The humpback became curious with and swam toward us a handful of times! We got amazing looks at it as it surfaced at the stern of the Privateer! We could see every little detail as it rollled around at the surface! We also saw it play and roll around in the kelp! It was spa day for the little 30-ft Humpback whale! We waved goodbye to our new whale friend and set out to hang out with ~200 Long-beaked Common dolphins! They were porpoising, breaching with tons of babies all around!
We had a SPECTACULAR day on the water! We can’t wait for what’s in store for the sunset trip!
Our sunset trip was FINOMENAL! We found the two humpback whales from earlier in the day. They were still hanging out around the kelp forest near Point Loma in about ~40-50 feet of water! Very shallow water for these large baleen whales! Humpback whales can grow up to 30-60 feet in length! They were being a little elusive and did not display much of a spout. We hung out with them for 4 breath cycles and saw their tail flukes once. We wished them whale and continued on our journey. We also saw a Mako shark, a few flying fish, two harbor seals and one California sea lion during our trip. There’s so much wildlife out there! Please join us soon!
Naturalist,
Vanessa & Melissa
