July 9, 2025 Wednesday: Sunny skies greeted our enthusiastic guests on this mornings wildlife tour of Mission Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Our moon phase is at full moon, meaning Spring tides, when we have a New or Full moon, the sun, moon and earth are in-line, this means greater gravitational pull. There are two bulges (high tides) and two troughs around the globe, equal and opposite to each other. As the world turns during this full moon phase, we have high high tides and low low tides. At the Last quarter and First quarter moons, the earth moon and sun are perpendicular to each other and we have Neap tides, meaning low high tides and high low tides. All of this tidal stuff means that the oceanographic conditions and food availabiltity for animals might be at its peak right now.
Indeed, just 30-minutes into our trip, we saw many small pods of dolphins stretched out over a large area of close to two nautical miles, being followed by the brilliant white elegant terns, the kleptoparasitic gulls and their favorite birds to harass the brown pelicans. There is a fisherman term for the plankton-eating fish such as a sardine, a “baitball” of fish leads to the feeding frenzy that we witnessed, not just once, but later on and further offshore during our voyage.
Our intrepid passengers located on the bow took a few showers for us all, as the ocean had some swells and chop with only a few seconds duration between each crest of the swell and the trough. We all became part of the small crowd on the planet that can call themselves at-sea mariners and an even smaller percentage of folks on this marvelous Blue Planet to see eye-to-eye with the intelligent, majestic, graceful and playful dolphins that came up close to look at us between foraging bouts of chasing fish. We saw nursery pods of mothers and babies or cow/calf pairs and lots of porpoising or leaping out of the water. Join us soon for another day on the water where the possibility of amazing is ever present. – Naturalist Greg McCormack
