What is a dolphin’s favourite TV show? – Whale of fortune!
On today’s morning trip, we were fortunate enough to find three different species of toothed whales within the order Cetacea! They are part of the Delphinidae family! We found offshore bottlenose dolphins and Risso’s dolphins! We travelled out south west towards the 9-mile bank and found an enormous pod of ~125 offshore bottlenose dolphins. They were leaping out of the water and tail slapping! It was so cool to see SO MANY offshore bottlenose dolphins in a general area. It was definitely a widespread pod that went on and on for miles! Then, as we were making our way back towards Mission Bay, we encountered a delightful surprise of ~50 Risso’s dolphins!! We seldom see Risso’s only about once or twice a month, so everyone on the boat even crew members were so stoked! Just before we made it back to the jetties, we found a great pod of ~30 long-beaked common dolphins!
On our afternoon trip, we encountered more dolphriends!!! We headed out west towards the drop-off and encountered a massive pod of ~300 short-beaked common dolphins! They were leaping out of the water and catching some air. They dolphinitely love to put on an acrobatic show for us!
Then, we headed out further west and encountered a pod of ~50 long-beaked common dolphins! We also saw 2 flying fish and 1 Mola-mola during the trip. We have a sunset trip coming up so please stay tuned!
We had a dolphin-filled sunset trip! Conditions were AMAZING – no wind, clean and flat surface water, and great visibility. We were only about a mile from Mission Bay when we came across a pod of about 250 super active long-beaked common dolphins!! We then headed towards the southwest and found about 100 offshore bottlenose dolphins, chin-slapping and tail-slapping all around us! As we headed back in, we saw another 100 long-beaked common dolphins, guiding us back to our home base.
Another great day on the Pacific Ocean!
Naturalist,
Melissa
