Who knew gray whales were giant sea puppies who like to ask for belly rubs? ! ❤ Our afternoon trip started off with a bang almost immediately! We found a California sea lion as soon as we left the jetties which caused us to slow down a bit. Then, before we knew it, we spotted a spout off of our bow! This spout turned into TWO spouts from two individual gray whales. As we were making our way towards the two spouts, ANOTHER gray whale popped up on our port side! We headed towards the gray whale on our port side because it was closer. Once we got a better look, we quickly realized there were actually TWO MORE gray whales swimming side by side. We were quickly surrounded by 4 gray whales traveling southbound. We hung out with the squad of gray whales for a good amount of time and saw a few up-close tail lifts. Then, as we were waiting for the gray whales to resurface again, we came across a pod of ~100 long-beaked common dolphins and a great flock of diving California brown pelicans! We headed back towards the gray whale zone and found ANOTHER gray whale, for a total of FIVE gray whales! This gray whale was displaying very interesting behavior, rolling around and showing its belly and waving its pectoral flippers in the air like they just don’t care! The gray whale continued to show its belly. It almost looked like it was asking for belly rubs. Then, we went back out towards more birds which led us to another pod of ~75 long-beaked common dolphins. We also saw an awesome raft of California sea lions in the mix. The sea lions and dolphins escorted us all the way back towards Quivera Basin. The cherry on top was a pod of ~5 inshore bottlenose dolphins and an adorable cow/calf pair!! Today was cetacean heaven on the Pacific Ocean. Looking forward to more ocean fun tomorrow, please come join us.
Naturalist,
Melissa
