Back to Back trips with Gray whales and Common dolphins! We set out on our morning trip and sighted a pair of Gray whales! They were about 5-miles from shore and slowly cruising to the south. We were so happy to see their spouts, the roll of their back and one of the whales tails! We continued to the NW and caught up with some short-beaked Common dolphins! They were super active and seemed to have the zoomies! They popped up all around our boat! It was fun to see them surfing our wake and riding the bow! On our afternoon trip, we set out to the west and spotted another pair of Southbound Gray whales only a couple miles from shore in 200-ft of water! We had nice views from both sides of the vessel! They consistently synchronized their breaths leaving passengers excited to see a double spout! They never lifted their flukes but we enjoyed their long periods at the surface. We continued out to deeper water and once we got to the drop-off we caught up with a fun pod of ~100 Long-beaked Common dolphin! They were feeding in deeper water about 200-feet below our feet! We spotted many cow/calf pairs all around us. On our way in, we could NOT find more dolphins! There were a bunch of pods sighted everywhere we were. We even spotted a raft of about 20 California sea lions! They picked up their heads to check us out! We also spotted a very small dinner plate sized Mola mola! We picked up a couple Mylar balloons along our journey today!
Sunset trips don’t get much better than this one was! We cruised right out to a southbound pair of gray whales and had tons of time to spend with them getting good looks on both sides for both sides of the boat. We found a small pod of long beaked common dolphins directly after the grays, headed out further and encountered some more dolphins hunting fish on the way back in!
With so much life in our waters – it’s a great time to come out!
Naturalist,
Vanessa & Alison
