We hung out with Gray whales and Long-beaked Common dolphins all day!
We started the morning trip off with a pod of ~50 Common dolphins zooming around just a mile off the Mission bay jetties! The sea conditions were glassy and smooth which made for some excellent underwater viewing! We could see every little movement they made! We continued out and heard about a Gray whale very close to the coast so we made a u-turn and waited about 10min and never saw it. So we left it be and pushed it to the west. We sighted a massive splash on the horizon! We cruised out to investigate and caught up with a northbound Gray whale! We got excellent looks!
On our way back in we caught up with more Common dolphins! We observed their surfing capabilities in our wake and on the bow! On our second trip, right off the bat we spotted some Common dolphins splashing around! We observed them cruising beside our boat with a couple cow/calf pairs in the mix! Only about 4-miles from Mission bay, we caught up with a TRIO of Gray whales! They were headed south to Mexico! We enjoyed watching them come up for synchronized breaths! We were lucky to see their tails being lifted! They were only down for about 4-5min dives. We turned in toward the coast and spotted another awesome pod of Common dolphins feeding on a big bait ball where birds were diving next to them!
Another sunset for the books! We had nothing to go off of from earlier in the day, all sighted whales had made it deep down into Mexico – way outside of our range so we schemed up our own plan to find the wildlife tonight. We headed out to 3 miles so everyone could grab drinks – and cruised up north from there. Pretty soon we saw some massive splashes cruising up to the north – west were quickly in pursuit. We spent some time trying to catch up to this pod of 50-70 bottlenose dolphins. They were difficult to count because they were separated between two pods that were alternating dives. We had plenty of time to spend with these dolphins but decided to peel off and search for some larger baleeen. When we were nearly back to the jetties, Melissa spotted a spout on the horizon so, we added an extra 20 ish minutes to our trip to make sure everyone got good looks at the pair of gray whales traveling north in the company of more bottlenose dolphins! Whenever we get inter species interactions, it’s super exciting! We watched the bottlenose harass the gray whales and the grays seemed to get a little excited about threat company.
Get out here people! The whale watching is HOT!
Naturalist,
Vanessa & Alison
