Such a fun and beautiful day on the water! Every trip is always different and we never what we are going to see!
For our morning trip we cruised out to the west and just beyond the drop-off we spotted diving birds and a big pod of ~400 short-beaked Common dolphins! They were launching out of the water breach and porpoising! Many of squealed as we spotted the tiny calves testing out their breaching skills! They were slowly headed to the SW. We waved goodbye to our new dolphriends and reached the 9-mile bank. We spotted a Minke whale that popped up out of nowhere. It was zigzagging toward the SE. After about 10 sightings it gave us the slip. We continued to the north and caught up with a super fun pod of ~100 Offshore bottlenose dolphin that were very energetic porpoising all around the Privateer. To our happy surprise a baleen whale popped up nearby. It was going opposite direction and was headed NW. At first, we thought it was a Minke due to the small size, but was actually putting up a 10-15ft spout. After reviewing our photos, we confirmed it was a Bryde’s whale! Not a normal sight for us this time of year but we not too disappointed! lol
On our afternoon trip we set out toward deeper water in hopes for more amazing wildlife. Only a few miles from shore outside of the Pacific beach we spotted a huge feeding frenzy! Underneath was a fun pod of ~200 Long-beaked Common dolphin! They were busy feeding but some did break away to hang out with us! We continued out toward the 9-mile bank. Out to the west was a bit quiet but on our way in we spotted another pod of Long beaked Common dolphins. This time the pod was huge! There was close to ~700 dolphins scattered across multiple bait balls! It was a bad day to be an anchovy! We had a fun time watching the calves leap about! Plenty of birds were diving all around us, keeping things exciting!
The seas settled from their mid day mischief this evening, we enjoyed a pretty smooth ride out past the drop off where we encountered a massive 3 square mile spread of long beaked common dolphins. We estimated there were about ~ 500 in our vicinity. Some groups were moseying around while others were vivaciously hunting bait fish. The lighting was so dramatic, we had 80% clear blue skies with a wall of clouds chasing down the sun – it created some incredible contrast that was SO MISLEADING – every leap from particularly enthusiastic dolphin resembled a spout. But no baleen in sight, and no chatter of baleen on the radio. Excited to see what surprises the sea has for us tomorrow! See ya then!
Naturalist,
Vanessa & Alison
