SPRING HAS SPRUNG! It truly felt like the FIRST day of SPRING out on the Pacific Ocean! We had springtime Humpback and Common dolphin madness out there! On our afternoon trip, we cruised to the south along the drop-off and sighted thousands of birds diving into the water! Under those birds was hundreds of Long-beaked Common dolphins! They corralled fish to the surface and then cut through those bait balls feasting! We enjoyed the dolphin acrobatics as many raced up toward the Privateer to bow ride and surf beside us! It was hard to not find dolphins! They were everywhere and were likely more than a thousand Commons out there! As we began to cruise to another pod a Humpback whale popped up right in front of us, only 100-yds away! We watched it as it followed the Commons up to the NW. We enjoyed watching it come up for 3-5 breaths and down for only a few minutes. On almost every dive it lifted its flukes! We continued on and spotted another Humpback on our way home!
On our afternoon trip, we cruised out to the SW and only 4-miles from shore we spotted a massive feeding frenzy! They say when the food is good, everyone shows up to the party! We were in luck because we were invited! We got to witness some amazing feeding behavior from Long-beaked Common dolphins, birds, California sea lions AND a Humpback whale! We watched in awe as a live-action Nat Geo documentary played in front of us! We observed the Commons working together to push the bait of (likely) anchovies up to the surface! The California Brown pelicans, terns and gulls dived into the water with great speed and chowed down! California sea lions zoomed around the entire scene enjoying the feast! We even witnessed the Humpback whale LUNGE FEED! We could see it lunge to the surface capturing bait and water allowing its throat pleats to expand and balloon out! Small schooling fish was falling out of its mouth! It was amazing to see it not once, but multiple times! The bait quantity seemed to be unlimited because the feeding frenzy never slowed down! It was hard to leave the scene but we could see more birds and dolphins out to the west so we had to investigate what else was out there! Our ride home was nice and smooth and we had incredible sunset!
We hope you’ll join us soon!
Naturalist,
Vanessa
