It was a GRAY day spent with GRAY whales! We had some dense fog banks of our coast today. On our morning trip, we cruised up the coastline in between two fog banks and enjoyed sightings of scattered Long-beaked Common dolphins! They almost seemed to seek us out and raced to the bow! We were scouting to the north when Captain John spotted a spout just outside of La Jolla! It was a southbound Gray whale that was sticking close to the coast, only about a mile from shore. We got great looks at the spout, the back, and the tail! We continued up and out to the west and found more Commons all around. There were small pods popping up all throughout the rest of the tour.
For our afternoon trip, the fog really came in, but that didn’t stop us from hanging out with whales! Down to the south, we hung out with a pod of FIVE Gray whales! We barely had any down time as the whales constantly came up for breaths! We even witnessed some synchronized spouts and flukes! A small pod of ~30 Long-beaked Common dolphin showed up to play with the Grays well! Some came to check us out, while others stuck close to the whales. We even observed the one of the whales swish it tail likely in response to the dolphins zooming around it! On our way home, the fog cleared, the sun came out, and we had blue skies! We had beautiful views of the coastline!
Our evening started off with scattered dolphins that seemed to be absolutely everywhere in small numbers, they covered a few miles – very sparingly.
After much searching, we came across our little local humpback whale! And, as it does – it BREACHED RIGHT OFF OUR BOW!!!!! As sunset crept closer, the fog crept back in and we went from blue skies to surrounded by mist in just minutes. When we got closer to land we were gifted with an open window to the sky, the cirrus clouds that hang out in the upper levels of the atmosphere were were catching those lower wavelengths of sunlight, fluffy ribbons of tangerine and strawberry clouds were framing the moon and Venus.
Naturalist,
Vanessa & Alison
