8 July 2025 AM Tuesday
“There she blows!-there she blows!” This is what some of us might think when we book a whale watch. This is the famous quote from Chapter 5 of the famous Herman Melville novel “Moby Dick” the epic written in 1851, just a year after California became the 31st state in 1850.
Our day started with the somewhat ubiquitous overcast skies, an atmospheric marine layer that is actually a temperature inversion. The cold California current cools the warmer, moist air that is drawn in to the coast by the convection of hot sun to the East and condensation occurs, creating the marine layer. We typically have this in late spring and early summer and you may have heard of May Gray, June Gloom and July No Sky. But this is fabulous for lighting as we don’t have the contrast of sun and shade.
Captain Brian voyaged south toward the Mexican border for 7-miles and we came across a feeding frenzy! Baitballs of fish, likely anchovies, either came to the surface voluntarily or were forced up by predatory fish such as the mackerel & tuna. Then the marine mammals herded and corraled the planktivorous forage fish. The dolphins use echolocation and sound blasts to find and stun the fish. A humpback whale spouted, was spotted and found, exciting our guests and going from one baitball to the next, like a kid in a candy store. We saw a few lunge-feeds, where the whale rushes straight up through the fish vertically in the water column or parallel to the surface, with throat pleats expanded and fish leaping out of the water by the hundreds. Hungry gulls got the injured, discombobulated fish at the surface. We also had a few imposters, sea lions pretending to be dolphins, porpoising through the plankton-rich waters to the dark clouds of fish schools. A wild and exciting time was had on our morning tour.
On our afternoon tour, we began at the bait dock, where there was a few sea lions jostling for the top spot on the yellow mooring ball. A purse seiner fishing boat was offloading live bait fish for the pens on the floating bait dock and there was a work crew using a hose to power wash the screens of the net-pens that house the live bait fish. These net pens get fouled by barnacles, mussels and thick seaweed. We motored out of Quivira Basin, through the Mission Bay Channel and out into the mighty Pacific. We encountered majestic Long-beaked common dolphins swimming and porpoising through various prey patches of fish, exciting our guests when they swam quickly over to greet us. Hundreds of terns, pelicans, gulls, shearwaters and other seabirds took advantage of the bounty of fish during this fecund portion of the summer, with the perfect oceanographic conditions. We had amazing views of the San Diego skyline, including the Hotel del Coronado, Imperial Beach and Tijuana, Mexico. Various war ships were out there, including an aircraft carrier and submarine. We are always amazed at what we see on our whale watching trips, come join us soon. -Naturalist Greg
