We were having a dolphin party aboard the Privateer! We sighted at least 8 different pods with lots of fun interactions with them! On our morning tour we sighted two feeding frenzies! The diving birds alerted us to the hotspot zone and we were thrilled to see them chasing small schools of anchovies! We spotted a couple of terns diving and taking fish away with them. We continued further out to the west and spotted our largest pod of about 400 Long-beaked commons cruising along. We loved to see them race up to us to bow-ride and surf our wake! We caught up with one last pod off of La Jolla before cruising in. They were a fun pod of short-beaked Common dolphins. They breached over and over exhibiting their amazing acrobatic abilities!
On our second trip of the day we spotted our first pod at about a mile from shore. There were ~50 Long-beaked Commons feeding on more anchovies! We observed a few of the dolphins swimming upside down chasing fish near the surface! On this trip we headed to the SW and once along the drop-off we hung out with a nursery pod of ~50 short-beaked Common dolphins! They were pretty mellow at the start of our encounter but then began to breach and porpoise nearby. We got the best looks as some of little calves did their best to mimic moms breaching behavior! Everyone excited to see them flying out of the water! We waved goodbye to them and went north. We spotted another larger pod of ~200 Short-beaked Common dolphins milling around, and not going in any one direction. We got great looks as they were jumping out of the water all around our boat. They kept swimming to the west as we began our journey home.
We have one more trip to go…stay tuned for updates!
Naturalist,
Vanessa
We had a FIN-omenal Friday sunset trip today!! We had a mugging minke whale and a BUNCH of dolphins. After viewing the sea lions at the bait receiver as always, we came straight out of the jetties to see if we could find any of the common dolphins that have been quite plentiful today. There seems to be lots of food around!
We found about 5 different little feeding frenzies of long-beaked common dolphins, bringing our dolphin total to 400! The highlight of the trip was definitely our minke whale encounter. We got to smell some stinky minke breath (which smells like rotting cabbage…), and got mugged by the minke once. A passenger yelped on the lower deck, I looked down, and all I saw was those cute little minke mittens in the water! The whale surfaced RIGHT at our bow, and we all screamed with excitement. You could see the whale’s entire rostrum, both blowholes, and even a little of the minke chevron pattern they have on their white bellies.
It was truly a fabulous trip, with a gorgeous sunset to complete our day. Now is the perfect time to come out with us- hope to see ya on a trip soon!
Naturalist, Olivia
