Saturday, August 24, 2024:
We had a Minke madness morning on the water!
We started the AM trip with blue skies and beautiful seas. As we stopped by the bait receiver on the way out of Mission Bay, we had very playful sea lions jumping up on the yellow buoy, fighting for the perfect sun bathing spot! Unfortunately, one of the smaller sea lions had fishing line or plastic debris wrapped around its head, seems to be digging in quite deep- you can see in the close up photo… very sad to see our human impact on the wildlife here, even just in the bay. But, it seemed to be displaying natural behaviors and was happy to enjoy the morning sun!
Off the dropoff in 800 ft of water, we had a MASSIVE pod of BOTH long-beaked and short-beaked common dolphins- probably at least 500 individuals!!! We were surrounded by the playful dolphins, as far as the eye could see! It was quite the sight for our guests to enjoy their curious behavior. As we continued west to deeper water, we encountered a MINKE baleen whale! We noticed a rouge wave in the blue vastness and thankfully we stuck around to get some great views of the Minke breathing at the surface! These whales are quite unpredicatable so it was keeping us on our toes, but guests were happy to get a glimpse of this beautiful whale!
PM trip to come, fingers crossed for some more marine mammals!
Our PM trip was FINOMENAL!! We caught up with two species of toothed whale! We found a spunky pod of ~150 Long-beaked common dolphins. They were switching sides, surfing along the boat, and having so much fun!
Then, we reached the drop-off, travelled north a bit before changing directions to go south along the drop-off. Along the way, we found ~30 offshore bottlenose dolphins! We saw a few adorable calves and the adults were coming up right next to the boat. We have another trip coming up for sunset so please stay tuned!
Our sunset trip carried the trends of the day! We sighted two pods of dolphins, one smaller pod of long beaks about 50 strong and another pod of short beaks that was probably about 200 strong. They were playful as ever – forever searching for the perfect boat wake to surf. While we spent time with the shorties, we briefly sighted another minke whale! The real show stopper tonight was the sunset!
Naturalists,
Brooke, Vanessa, Melissa & Alison
