Happy 4th of July everyone! We are seeing RED, WHITE and BLUE skies today! We had a wonderful day spent with a Humpback and hundreds of Common dolphins!
This morning we cruised out of the Mission bay jetties and right out of the gate, we spotted a big feeding frenzy of ~100 Long-beaked Common dolphins and birds! There were little bait balls of anchovies in all directions around the boat! We could see the Commons zooming around chasing bait! We could see even see them swimming upside down belly up trying to capture the fish that way! We continued our journey to the south and beyond Point Loma we spotted more Commons out in the distance! Not too far from them was a spout! We excited to hang out with a Humpback whale! It was traveling slowly to the SE. We got great looks as one time it popped up right in front of us and even pooped! lol We noticed had some interesting shaped flukes! The tips were rounded, and not pointy like they normally are and assumed that the Humpback must have been in close contact with the top predator of the sea, the Orca! We waved goodbye and continued home taking in all the sunshine and great views!
On our afternoon trip, we pushed down to the south again! Along the way, we sighted a small pod of ~50 Long-beaked Common dolphins. They were popping up on all sides of the boat. We enjoyed watching them ride the bow and surf our wake. We spotted a couple juveniles, but most were adult Commons. We heard from the Inspiration, our third vessel in our fleet that the Humpy was still south and zoomed as fast as we could down there. We finally saw the spout out in the distance and noticed it was heading south. The next time we saw it, it was in Mexico! We couldn’t venture past the border so we waved from afar! We pushed out to the NW and spotted another very active pod of ~100 Long-beaked Common dolphins and they were just as playful as the first pod!
We have one more trip to go! Stay tuned for updates! —Naturalist Vanessa
Ooh-ing and ahh-ing over cetaceans is now a year-round tradition at San Diego Whale Watch. On today’s sunset cruise, we had our first encounter with toothed whales or odonticetes, in this case we had Long beaked common dolphins, about 3-miles offshore, that were busy foraging on fish. We got some good looks as the 400+ dolphins porpoised right by our vessel. Captain Bryan headed south as one of his boat captain friends said he had a cetacean sighting down near the Mexican border. We came within 2 nautical miles of the border and encountered first one, then two more Humpback Whales, our mysticete or baleen whale friends. The pair of humpbacks were breaching, at least 9 times, creating massive splashed from their 30–40 ton bodies. We saw some pec-slapping as well. What a great way to officially start our 250th year since our independence beginning. We hope you have many more whale watching experiences ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the wildlife, so come join us on another tour soon. Please be responsible and safe out there tonight and remember that rogue pyrotechnics can be stressful for your neighbors, pets and wildlife. -Naturalist Greg
