The first day of June greeted our intrepid travelers and guests with liquid sunshine, the official “June Gloom” of coastal overcast weather. The drizzle gave way to clearing skies and we headed out to the 9-Mile Bank, part of the Coronado Escarpment of underwater topography or bathymetry that makes it a good spot for krill production. Unfortunately, the krill specialists, aka the Blue Whales were not to be found today despite a big effort in searching by crew and guests. Our blue whale season has just begun and occasionally while looking far offshore, we come back “empty handed.” Our passengers were encouraged to come out another time in the future, as we want everyone to have a successful whale watch. -Naturalist Greg
We had some clearing of the skies for our 2nd trip of the day. We witnessed many different ways of recreating, from SUP to fishing kayaks to parasailing. This time we found some Offshore Bottlenose dolphins cavorting a few miles west of Point LaJolla. These very social odonticetes (toothed whales) exhibited many types of behavior, from porpoising, breaching, tail-slapping, mating, foraging and lining up and surfacing in a “parade formation”. We saw a few cow/calf pairs or moms with young and some graceful bow-riding. For the birders, we had Pomarine Jaegers chasing Elegant Terns, a type of piracy or parasitism. We also witnessed a few Sooty Shearwaters from New Zealand and Pink-footed shearwaters from Chile in South America.
Naturalist, Greg
Our sunset trip had excellent conditions as we headed straight out to the west to see what other wildlife we could find! Seas were calm with a light breeze. A bit past the dropoff, we started to see some taller dorsal fins. What we originally thought was offshore bottlenose quickly turned out to be RISSO’S dolphins!!! The whole boat watched in awe as the water visibility allowed us to easy see their white bodies jetting through the water. The pod of about 40 individuals circled the boat in multiple directions, breaching and tail slapping all over. We eventually left the risso’s and continued to the west to see what else was out there! We began to turn towards home as the sun started to set, but we soon found ourselves surrounded by some super spunky short-beaked common dolphins! There were SO many little calves in this group of about 200 individuals. The sun’s gorgeous orange hues on the surface of the water made this magical encounter one to remember. We stuck around for a bit to enjoy their presence as much as they seemed to enjoy ours. As we made our final turn to head home, the group split and half stampeded off into the sunset, breaching and tail slapping the whole way! It was such an awesome way to end our day, especially with the gorgeous sunset we had tonight.
Hope to see ya on a trip whale-y soon!
Naturalist, Olivia
