Gray whales are HERE in San Diego! We had a bit of a delay, but we spotted multiple Grays throughout the day!
As soon as we left the Mission Bay jetties, we spotted a spout to the north of us! It was a very chill Gray whale coming up for 3-4 breaths and going down for 5ish minutes! It turned in toward the coast and then zigzagged toward us! It went under our boat and popped on the other side only about 10 feet from our boat! We were so surprised that we almost missed the photo op! We began to cruise out to the west and sighted another spout to the south of us! We spotted another single and then another pair so a grand total of 5 Grays all headed south! We got great looks at their tail flukes from most of the whales.
For our second trip of the day, we turned to the south and spotted a spout a few miles down! We hung out with the solo Gray whale and watched it surface with Point Loma as its backdrop! We continued out to the west and spotted a bunch of seabirds diving! And sure enough under the birds was a fun pod of Long-beaked Common dolphins! They were all trending down to the south! They surrounded the boat, while hitching a ride in our wake and on the bow! It was fun to scout for the babies as they leaped out of the water doing their best to keep up with mom! On our way in, we spotted another single Gray whale! It was just outside of the kelp forest! We waved goodbye as it continued toward Mexico!
FINALLY! It feels like grey whale season has officially started! We headed out west from the jetties and almost immediately spotted a spout to the southwest. We cruised next to this gray whale for a while, but it was a shy whale so we decided to move on and see what else we could find out in the ocean. We pointed our vessel to the north and almost immediately again found another whale. This gray whale was a bit more sociable and showed its fluke on almost every dive while we were observing this whale another whale popped up behind our vessel! We LOVE seeing our ocean so full of life! We are finally receiving some rain here in Southern California, so we got some sprinkles on the sunset cruise, but it led to a stunning sunset sky. To the west, we had golden crepuscular rays dancing through the gaps in the clouds and to the east, we had two vibrant rainbows, catching the last rays of light.
Naturalist,
Vanessa & Alison
