We saw a couple of warships. One was the USS San Diego, an amphibious warship of the San Antonio Class. We did see a couple of small pods of Long-beaked common dolphins; on our way out for a possible Blue Whale, which was reported to our captain, who has many friends on other vessels both near and far offshore.
For our seabirds, we saw several small groups of Black-vented shearwaters, which have quick, choppy wingbeats, a dark bill, a dusky face, and are dull brown above. They nest on the Coronado Islands just 30-miles south of us in northern Baja California, Mexico.
For this trip, we got 17.5 miles offshore to find the Blue Whale, which was heading west even before we saw the first couple of spouts from a mile away. We heard that it was on 10-minute dives with a pretty good surface interval time. Sure enough, our 85’ long Blue Whale came up only 100 yards on our starboard. Captain Michael was able to position the boat perfectly for fabulous views and got a drone up to film the largest animal to ever inhabit this beautiful Blue Planet. We witnessed about a dozen breaths, a short dive and another half-dozen breaths before it arched its back and disappeared on its next dive. A big roar when up from the crowd and everyone was excited, particularly because we mentioned we needed to be committed to perhaps getting back a little late.
The icing on the cake was finding about 650 Long-beaked common dolphins only 2-miles off of the north and south jetties of the Mission Bay Channel Entrance. When a blue whale is present, it is likely that there is krill in the waters and that it might stick around for awhile, so be sure to tell your friends to get out on a boat and come join us. We are so lucky to be a part of the “One Percent Club” of whale watchers that has ever witnessed a blue whale in the wild! Let’s see what we can find on our sunset cruise. -Naturalist Greg McCormack
On our sunset trip, we departed the dock at 17:00 hours and made a close pass of the floating bait dock. We saw about a dozen California sea lions and many types of birds, including snowy egrets, great egrets, brown pelicans, Brandt’s cormorants, Western gulls, Heermanns gulls and a lone great blue heron. Many of the birds are able to stalk and stab fish through the slats, the netted pens beneath have 10’s of 1000’s of live “bait” fish, such as sardines and anchovies, used by fisherman to catch tuna.
We got about 8-miles off of the Torrey Pines Golf Course above Blacks Beach and over the Scripps-San Diego submarine canyon. In 1,700 feet of water, we found a pod of about 750 Short-beaked common dolphins. Many of them were breaching, the result of which is a loud percussive sound that could be a way of spooking prey, a way of disciplining other dolphins nearby or a way of showing pleasure or displeasure, It is also a way of dominance hierarchy and ritualized courtship displays. Later, we came across a pod of long-beaked common dolphins beneath a large flock of plunge-diving pelicans and terns. The sun beams through the clouds looked divine and we enjoyed the following seas on the way back to the Mission Bay channel. Hope to see you all soon aboard one of our vessels. Summer is waning, don’t miss out! -Naturalist Greg
