Triple Gray whale Tuesday is upon us! We caught up with three individual Gray whales all headed down south to their nursing/breeding grounds! We caught glimpses of heart-shaped spouts and tail flukes! While waiting for our last whale to surface, it popped up only 20-ft from the boat and surprised us all! The loud sound of its exhalation shook us to our core! Our first sighting of the trip was a huge scattered pod of ~100 Long-beaked Common dolphins! They were all around us, pretty much everywhere we went. We even hung out with a huge feeding frenzy with a variety of bird species, Commons and California sea lions! We also spotted two huge rafts of California sea lions headed to the south! There was about 20 individuals in the mix, not a common sight to see down here in San Diego! We can count on those numbers further north where the food is a plenty!
Man! There’s very little more stunning than whale watching at sunset. This trip was off to a fast start! We found a pod of playful dolphins almost immediately, we got to hang out with them for about 10 minutes before we cited two spouts on the horizon. Once we saw the spout, we jetted off in that direction to see if we could get a glimpse at the gray whales migrating south as we headed towards them the dolphins sped along with us riding in the lake, jumping high into the air, pulling it shreeks of joy out of every passenger on board. We spent about an hour and a half hanging out with these gray whales as they cruise south. They showed their flukes a few times at the very end, that combined with their spouts being illuminated by the buttery sunset lighting was an absolute site to behold.
Naturalist,
Vanessa & Alison
