Who is responsible for the sunshine? We had one of our uncommon sunny days in what is typically our “June Gloom” season with associated marine layer making it cool and gray. Our deckhand immediately spotted a pod of Short-beaked common dolphins only 1.5-miles off of Pacific Beach. They took us to Bird Rock and southern LaJolla. The captain made a course change from heading due north to due south for 45-minutes, an 8-mile stretch, but it was worth it. Word was out that the Blue whales had been seen. Sure enough, we saw the distinctive tall, columnar spout and saw the long, blue-gray back. Our 1 blue whale morphed into two, as one came up in the exact same location and fluked up before sounding. A Whaley good time was had by everyone. Good to belong to the 1% Club, the few that have ever seen the largest mammal on the planet.
On our afternoon trip, we had great looks at a feeding frenzy of common dolphins and had a “stinky Minke”, with hundreds of hungry birds following the bait ball and dolphins. -Naturalist Greg
