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.
On our sunset trip this evening, we made our way out to the W/NW and just after crossing over the dropoff, we found a juvenile humpback whale! I spotted the first few blows and informed Captain Brian, who turned us towards its direction! I swear I had seen two blows coming up, but we only ever hung out with one humpie. 🙂 It was a beautiful encounter as the sun began to set, with the whale flaunting its flukes for a sounding dive a few times and giving us a gorgeous fluke “waterfall”.
As we had first found the humpie, Captain Brian had also spotted some dolphins further N. So at the end of our time with the humpie, we made our way over to catch up with about 200 SUPER spunky short-beaked common dolphins! It felt like we were in the middle of a popcorn bucket, with dolphins launching themselves out of the water in EVERY direction!! We spotted so many calves in this group also, who were tail-slapping and really showing off for our guests on board.
It was a fabulous day with a gorgeous sunset and an almost full moon to finish it off. Every day out here is a gift, and we can’t wait to see you on a trip whale-y soon!
Naturalists, Greg & Olivia
