Gray whales, Fin whales and Commons oh my! We had two beautiful trips with success in finding baleen and toothed whales all day!
We cruised out to the west on the morning trip and spotted a spout a mile from the drop-off! We caught up with TWO gray whales that were headed northbound! They were a bit unpredictable with their dive times, breaths and their direction of travel. Initially they were cruising beside us then they took a turn toward the coast. We never knew when they were gonna come up to the surface but we were fortunate to see their tail flukes raised a bunch of times! We left them behind and continued out to the west and spotted a huge feeding frenzy! We hung out with ~300 Short-beaked Common dolphins with about 10 Long-beaked Common dolphins mixed in! It was cool to see a short beaked and long-beaked Common dolphin traveling side-by-side!
On our afternoon trip, we set out to the SW and spotted another massive feeding frenzy! We could see at least 10 mini feeding frenzies that spanned a few miles! Approximately, 500 Long-beaked Common dolphins were spotted throughout the entire zone! We enjoyed the porpoising dolphins that raced up to the Privateer to ride the bow! There were so many cow/calf pairs zooming around the boat. We got to the 9-mile bank and caught up with a pair of Fin whales! Almost immediately, they turned toward us and came up for a breath at the same time! We could see their lower right white jaw and then they smoothly cruised down the whole starboard side of our boat! We were stoked to see such a friendly set of whales! We noticed a third Fin to the west of us but it quickly headed further away from us.
We have one more trip to go! We will update you soon!
Our sunset trip was amazing! We saw so many dolphriends today! We saw about ~100 offshore bottlenose dolphins located about ~10 miles offshore! We had so much fun seeing them leap out of the water and act super playful! We also saw so many calves! On our way home we saw a small pod of ~30 long-beaked common dolphins. We have more ocean fun coming up tomorrow! Sea you soon 🙂
Naturalist,
Vanessa & Melissa
