Our afternoon trip began with a look at a few California sea lions playing a game of “King of the Buoy” just behind our slip at the floating bait dock. We also saw hundreds of seabirds and wading birds. Snowy egrets, Great Egrets, Great Blue herons, CA and Western Gulls, Brown pelicans, Double Crested cormorants, Brant’s cormorants, and a lone Black-crowned night heron. As soon as we exited the Mission Bay Channel, we saw seabirds flying erratically above some splashing water and we came upon just over 1000 Common Long-beaked dolphins. They weigh around 220 and 330 pounds and can be 6-8’ long. These dolphins are incredibly curious, playful and acrobatic. We came across two or three more pods of them, but the first pod was the most active due to the swirling eddy full of forage fish, the anchovies became food for many dolphins and the hungry gulls, terns and pelicans. The last pod of dolphins were Offshore Bottlenose dolphins off of Point LaJolla and the Scripps submarine canyon. We saw some interesting vessels, including a tugboat, Navy warship and a couple of UFO’s out there, unidentified floating objects, what Captain Brian described as Seasats, autonomous surface vessels or drone-boat makers. We had a good looking and enthusiastic group of passengers on board, and we look forward to having you and your fiends again on a future whale watch tour. Thanks for joining us, see you again soon.
On our sunset trip, we didn’t let this June gloom stop us and left the jetties, headed straight out to the west! Conditions were gorgeous on the water. We had excellent visibility and glassy water for miles. We started to see some jellies, even spotted a mola mola, and ran right into a small group of 10 offshore bottlenose dolphins. It seemed like they led us right to our next sighting, a minke whale! This slinky minke seemed to zig-zag a bit and showed very short dives, lasting about 3-6 minutes. We enjoyed getting some amazing looks at this individual and began to make our turn to head towards home. Just as we began to turn, we spotted a plethora of dorsal fins out in a flat patch of water and found a group of about 25 offshore bottlenose dolphins! This was a super fun group that seemed to do some people watching as they swam sideways alongside the boat, showcasing their white bellies. They put on a bit of a breaching show as we made our final turn towards home!
Hope to -sea- ya on a trip soon.
Naturalists, Greg & Olivia
