Minke mayhem again! Our luck continues with the most unsuspected whale, usually elusive and difficult to track down ( we like to refer to them as the feral cats of the baleen world), we’ve now had multiple EPIC trips with a friendly Minke whale! (You know that feeling when the cat you’ve been trying to buddy up with finally falls asleep on your lap? Yeah, kinda like that.) It’s always incredible to watch whales thriving in their natural habitat – but when they show as much interest in you as you have in them – it changes the game entirely. This little 30 ish foot long whale did laps around our vessel, rolling upside down and flashing its white belly. Everyone aboard was rushing from one side of the vessel to another trying to see where it was going to pop up next. It got close enough to stink bomb us a few times, there’s a reason they’re called the “stinky minke”. 😂😷 Their breath is POTENT. We saw a purple stripped jelly while watching the minke – then headed home and got to spend some great time with a playful pod of long beaked common dolphins!
On our PM trip we stopped first at the bait receiver to look at the suuuper cute sea lion cuddle puddle. They were certainly enjoying the sunny weather today! We made our way straight out to the west and found a long stretch of splashes about a mile to the north, and found a massive pod of 450 long-beaked common dolphins. We saw a few cow-calf pairs, and spent awhile with the pod before we continued headed offshore to the northwest. I started to notice a bunch of bird activity- some massive piles and birds diving into the water. Then we started to see dorsal fins- MORE dolphins!! These were also long-beaked common dolphins, but this group was certainly more special than the last. This pod of 350 showed us every single surface-active behavior in the book! We even noted some courtship and mating behaviors with the excellent water visibility we had today. There were gulls, shearwaters, and elegant terns diving everywhere trying to grab any fish they could! We got great looks at a massive bait ball the pod of dolphins had been working on right next to the boat.
Excited to see what our sunset trip has to hold! Stay tuned 🙂
Naturalists, Alison & Olivia
