15 July 2025. AM Morning Trip: We had an overcast day. July “no sky” follows “May gray” and “June gloom” for the coastal regions of Southern California. This is excellent lighting for photography, without the contrast of sun and shadow. Set your ISO on your DSLR and we are ready for capturing some magic. Our M/V Privateer voyage took us 10 miles offshore the coast. We came across a pod of Offshore Bottlenose dolphins, around 100, showing us their inquisitive nature and fast swimming with an incredibly adapted fusiform body shape, many with rake mark scars on their back and quite a few cow/calf pairs, or mothers and babies. They are majestic and marvelous marine mammals, finding food by echo-location. We could hear their breathing and sometimes the “signature whistles” which is sort of like the name of each individual, which makes finding friends and relatives in your pod much easier. We had amazing visibility and could easily see ships coming up over the distant horizon, including a car carrier and oil tanker. We saw an aircraft carrier and a submarine, historic planes doing practice during their aerial sorties, with the pilots tipping the wing to say “hello”.
For the afternoon trip, Captain Bryan took us far to the south, in fact, we came within just a mile or two of the Mexican/American border. There was so much to see, from the lighthouse at Cabrillo National Monument , to the Coronado Bridge and historic Hotel del Coronado which just underwent a $500,000,000.00 restoration. We saw the skyline of tall skyscrapers, the 27th largest city in all of Latin America—Tijuana—with over 5 million residents and a bustling city. We saw a Peruvian warship, an aircraft carrier, a huge oil tanker based out of Georgetown, Grand Cayman, helicopters and historic navy planes. The highlight was the humpback whale. WE could see the spout and got photos of the underside of the whale tail. If anyone else got a photograph and wants to participate in citizen science, send your photo to Happy Whale dot com. We know the place and time of birth of most humpbacks in the world due to this powerful software. We had three or four pods of common dolphins, busy visiting us and pursuing their favorite fish prey. All in all a fantastic day out on the water. Please join us again soon, we have the M/V Inspiration, a brand new vessel that is ready to take you and your friends on an ocean adventure. -Naturalist Greg
