It was such a beautiful day with sightings of Gray whales and Long-beaked Common dolphins!
On our morning trip, we began by pushing out to the west. We noticed a lot of bird activity out there when our other whale watch friends let us know there was a Gray whale spotted very close to the coast off Point Loma! We turned in and hung out with a single Gray whale that came up for 3-4 breaths and was down for ~5-min dive times. It fluked almost every time it went down for its sounding dive. On our last few cycles with it, we noticed it began to travel closer to the coast, likely in the kelp forest. We noticed it stopped fluking when we spotted another spout to the SW of us. We realized that there were actually TWO Grays headed south! We waved goodbye and went back to the bird activity and experienced a beautiful NatGeo moment! We observed 4 or 5 feeding frenzies with birds diving as well as Long-beaked Common dolphins corralling the bait balls. We also sighted a bunch of California sea lions in the mix! We don’t normally see lots rafts of CA sea lions in big numbers so this was a huge treat! One juvenile leaped over and over showing off for our passengers! We spotted scattered pods of Common dolphins all the way home.
During our sunset trip, the sea conditions got even calmer! We had glassy waters with visibility increasing as the trip went on. We spotted some bird and dolphin activity to the SW so naturally, we pushed out to catch up with it! We were surrounded by Long-beaked Common dolphins! They were slowly traveling to the north and could spot them as far as our eye could see to the west! We loved to see them race up to our boat to hitch a ride! Lots of cow/calf pairs sighted everywhere! We hugged the coast up to the north and took in the views. We kept the search alive by scanning in all directions! We could see the downtown San Diego skyline, San Clemente and up and down the coastline! As the sun began to set, the sky was lit up with a bright reddish glow. Since we had glassy waters, the sky reflected the gorgeous glow! The sunset was absolutely beautiful! We caught up with more Common dolphins and watched them leap out of the water with the sunset as the background! We couldn’t have asked for a more breathtaking trip!
We hope you’ll join us for a trip soon!
Naturalist,
Vanessa
