Who likes anchovies on their pizza? Common dolphins would if they ate pizza! On both tours, we encountered some awesome very lively feeding frenzies and anchovies were on the menu!
During our morning tour, we cruised up to the NW and enjoyed the calm seas and two pods of Long-beaked Common dolphins! We were just outside of La Jolla when we sighted hundreds of birds diving into the water! Underneath those birds were hundreds of Common dolphins. As soon as they noticed us, some zoomed over to us to hang out! We spotted plenty of cow/calf pairs in the mix. We left one pod of ~400 and continued west and spotted another pod that ranged about ~200 individuals! Along the way, we sighted a couple sea lions in the area as well!
On our afternoon cruise, we headed back out to all the action up north! Along the way, we spotted a purple-striped jellyfish, and a gull feeding on left-over rockfish. We enjoyed coastal views of Pacific beach, La Jolla, and even Del Mar! While following the drop-off to the La Jolla canyon, we spotted the feeding birds and dolphins! The first pod was an estimated ~100 Long-beaked Common dolphins that raced to the north! We caught up with them and could see them on both sides of the boat. We continued even more to the north and enjoyed watching ~600 Long-beaked Common dolphins! They were densely aggregated and surrounded our boat! We could hear them whistling and were excited to see cow/calf pairs. There were also a couple bait balls that we cruised by! On our way back toward the south two more small pods were sighted totaling ~100 individuals altogether.
We hope you’ll join us for a tour soon! It’s dolphinately an experience to remember!
Naturalists,
Melissa & Vanessa
