A gorgeous glassy morning out on the Pacific led to a morning of Minke mayhem very quickly. Just a few miles from the coast we noticed some splashing in the water turned out to be a few hundred Long-beaked common dolphins. These dolphins were cruising through glassy water, chasing fish playing in the wake and leaping out next to our boat. After we spent a good amount of time playing with these dolphins, we set out to search a little bit further west. With our eyes on a bird pile far off on the horizon, we saw a massive splash! Not just one splash multiple massive splashes! It was a Minke missile!
This Minke whale jumped out of the water 4 to 5 times before we caught up with it at which point it stopped, of course. However, this Minke hung out around our boat, giving us many good looks, it even mugged us! It swam right underneath our bow so shallow that we could make out. It’s bright white mittens! The ocean was generous today . On our way back in we saw EVEN MORE common dolphins!
We had a beautiful afternoon trip with fun swell and energetic Common dolphins! We pointed our nose to the SW and hung out with a fun pod of ~100 Long-beaked Common dolphins that were moving fast to the north! We pushed out to the west and right at the drop-off we caught up with another larger pod of ~200 Long-beaks! They were spotted to feed every now and again! We got great looks as they zoomed over to us to interact with the boat! The Pelicans were checking the dolphins as well as US out! We had some nice flyovers! We enjoyed a peaceful ride out and to the north!
The sunset trip was AMAZING! We encountered over 2000 Long-beaked Common dolphins throughout our tour! We traveled a little over 12-miles and pretty much everywhere we went we could see a feeding frenzy with birds and dolphins! It helped that we had gorgeous glassy seas producing great visibility! We could see for miles allowing us to hit up every feeding frenzy on the block! We enjoyed watching the beautiful dolphins zoom around our boat. Each pod had their own unique mission! Some came to us to hang out and hitch a ride while others were nursery pods! Too many cow/calf pairs to count! Many of them had fetal folds! We also noticed many of the pods feeding under the diving birds. The sunset was lovely bringing out the best colors from gold to pink and everything in between!
Please join us for a tour soon! We would love to have you!
Naturalists,
Alison & Vanessa
