Bottlenose dolphins greeted us in the Mission Bay Channel entrance. They came up to our bow to ride the pressure wave of our vessel, the Privateer, before returning to their work of foraging for food.
Speaking of food, most food for dolphin pods and whales come in food patches. “Patchiness” is an ecological concept describing food in large or small patches, deep or shallow. Each day, our feathered and flippered friends have to look, sometimes for hours, before finding these food patches. This is why we look for “birds gone wild”, which indicates food—in the form of schooling fish such as anchovies—at the surface. Active seabirds attract more birds (they watch each other) and it is likely for us to find mammals such as dolphins, sea lions and whales in that same area.
We came across multiple pods of foraging dolphins from 3-miles to 5-miles offshore. It’s fascinating to see the curiosity, power, grace and majesty of these mysterious beings. Dolphins have large brains just like humans and someday we might be able to hear what cetaceans are saying. Perhaps they are sending messages that we aren’t listening for or know how to listen and interpret?
We had an epic afternoon trip with a STINKY Minke and Common dolphins! As we cruised out of the Mission bay jetties, we spotted a couple of Inshore bottlenose dolphins and lazy California sea lion! We continued out to the west and mile north of us, some diving birds caught our eye! Then all of a sudden the back and dorsal fin from a Minke appeared next to the feeding frenzy! We got to the zone and were excited to see the Minke circling around a very dense bait ball of anchovies! We saw it surface in the bait ball and even saw it POOP indicating it was actively feeding out there! We were waiting for it surface and then we all got knocked out with a big WHIFF of Stinky Minke breath! After awhile, the whale gave us a slip and we couldn’t find it. We began heading west and spotted it again so we got a couple bonus looks! We found some Common dolphins to the north of us along the drop-off. There were about ~150 Long-beaked Common dolphins also chasing bait balls! We got great views as they surfaced next to our boat in a synchronized fashion! Plenty of calves were sighted all around. We waved goodbye to our new dolphriends and headed home…time flies when you’re having fun!
WOW! We had a dolphin party on the sunset trip! We cruised out to the west and spotted thousands of birds about 6-miles from shore! Once we caught up with them, we realized there were hundreds and hundreds of Long-beaked Common dolphins! They were literally everywhere we looked! We ended up with a grand total of OVER ~2000 Common dolphins! There were pockets of feeding dolphins, nursery pods, and fast-moving traveling dolphins! It was social hour and we had an invitation to the best party on the water! We had non-stop encounters with dolphins that rode the bow, surfed our wake and played next to our boat! We had not seen that many dolphins spread out over the 5-square miles we covered. We even saw more dolphins down to the south that we could not reach. We had a quick sighting of Offshore bottlenose dolphins jumping in the distance that we tried to catch up with but they disappeared on us, likely on a dive. The sunset on our ride home was incredibly beautiful!
We hope to see ya on a trip soon!
Naturalists,
Greg & Vanessa
