We had the Luck of the Irish on our side today! We had two awesome trips with multiple sightings of whales and dolphins! To start our day off right, we encountered ~5-7 Coastal bottlenose dolphins inside the Mission bay channel! There was even a sighting of a cow/calf pair! They were circling in one spot feeding below. We pointed our nose to the west and spotted a raft of about 20 California sea lions. We also spotted two “hungry hungry” Mola molas with Velella velella’s surrounding them indicating they were likely feeding! We spotted some larger splashes to the west of us and were super excited to see a spread out pod of ~30 Offshore bottlenose dolphins! Always exciting to see both populations of bottlenose dolphin on one trip! A couple of Gray whales surfaced in front of us that had a handful of Common dolphins accompanying them. We think they may have been cruising north, but also saw them headed east at one point. They were shy so we let them carry on. We noticed a huge pod of fast-traveling Long-beaked Common dolphins racing to the NW! There were birds following them. We observed a couple of mini feeding frenzies form. Then a spout appeared in all the excitement! We hung out with a Humpback whale that surfaced for 3-5 breaths and had 3-5 min dives! We got a couple glimpses of lazy tail dives. It was a great morning!
On our sunset trip, the seas smoothed out and had almost glassy water with amazing clear visibility! We could see the dark moody clouds on the horizon. As we ventured out of the jetties, we spotted a few inshore bottlenose dolphins that raced up to our bow to surf. We cruised out to the west and spotted a Mola mola that waved at us with its dorsal fin. We also saw plenty of By-the-wind-sailors everywhere we went out in deeper water. We got the drop-off and followed that to the south when we spotted a huge pod of ~300 Short-beaked Common dolphins! They were porpoising and breaching to the NW. We caught up with them and bee-lined it straight to our boat! There were some super tiny calves in the pod which upped the cuteness factor! There were plenty of calves that had visible fetal folds indicating they were just days old! We enjoyed the smooth ride home and beating the dark rain clouds that followed behind us. We will be offline tomorrow as we are expecting another 24 hour storm and should be back on Wednesday!
Naturalist,
Vanessa
