A lovely day after the Memorial Day holiday weekend. On both trips, we spotted thousands of seabirds flying in an excited manner, indicating an “all you can eat ocean buffet” of schooling fish, in multiple “bait balls” just beyond the Mission Bay Channel entrance. Minutes later, our passenger guests were greeted enthusiastically by Common Dolphins foraging on the hapless fish. We witnessed an amazing spectacle, a feeding frenzy for so many of our feathered and flippers friends. Our vessel, the Privateer, voyaged out close to 8 nautical miles in waters approaching 1,600’ in depth. Hope to see you and your friends and family soon on a future whale watch.
Why don’t humpback whales ever become detectives? – Because they always BLOW their cover! Today’s sunset trip started off a bit quiet….we were seeing lots of traveling birds such as sooty shearwaters, elegant terns, & black-vented shearwaters. We travelled so many nautical miles trying to cover as much water as possible! We were ~10 miles offshore at our furthest point. We eventually caught up with a small pod of ~5 short-beaked common dolphins and then started to make our way back towards the coast. On our way home around ~7.5 miles offshore, we encountered some more seabirds and found so many long-beaked common dolphins underneath! There were at least ~400 long-beaked common dolphins in the general area!
Then, amongst all of the chaos happening with the feeding frenzy we encountered one HUMPBACK whale! It came up towards us a couple of times and showed its tail flukes multiple times! The humpback whale had a very distinct pattern on the underside of its tail flukes, mostly white with a fringing black trim. The long-beaked common dolphins surfed alongside our boat on our way home! More salty fun coming up tomorrow, please join us on another whale watching tour!
Naturalist, Greg & Melissa
