We had beautiful seas, great visibility and a stealthy visit from a Humpback on the morning trip and a surprise Minke sighting on the afternoon trip! Both Short-beaked and Long-beaked Common dolphins were sighted all day!
We left the jetties and had a quick sighting of a brave little Harbor seal relaxing in a kelp paddy! We cruised out to the west and a passenger let us know something large was splashing out in the distance! We glassed with our binoculars and spotted a humpback whale raising one of its long pectoral flippers out of the water! It dropped it and created a big splash. This behavior is what we call pec-slapping! We observed it surface for a breath and then an arching dive. We got to the scene and spotted one more spout and dive, but then it gave us the slip! We thought we saw it a couple more times, but never spotted it again. While trying to resight it, we spotted some splashes out to the west! We watched as hundreds of Short-beaked Common dolphins cruised in toward the coast! They were very spread out but amazing to see them all around the boat! We got to see some tiny calves hanging out next to mom! We enjoyed watching the speedy dolphins race up to us to bow-ride and surf in our wake! We estimate there were about 1000 dolphins spread out all around us! On our way in, we sighted ~40 Long-beaked Common dolphins headed north!
On our afternoon trip, we spotted about 50 Long-beaked Common dolphin feeding under diving tern birds! A few dolphins came over to check us out and we got close looks as they swam beside our boat! We waved goodbye to the fun bunch and continued toward the NW. We made it about 8-miles from shore and spotted two Mola mola’s! They were hanging out together, sunbathing! They were pretty comfortable with us as we got pretty good looks on all sides of the boat! We were about to leave when Naturalist, Alison spotted a Minke whale off the bow! We were excited to see it pop up close to us a few times! It was mostly headed to the SW but seemed to be interested in us! With Minke’s, they can be shy or social, and today we were lucky to encounter a curious one! It began to travel north, so we turned around continued toward the coast!
From Minke miracle to minke mystery! We sighted a minke briefly but it gave us the slip right quick! We found TONS of dolphins and turns it was WILD out there! Feeding frenzies every direction we looked. We saw nearly 600 dolphins of both long and short – beaked varieties. The sky had beautiful cascading rays of sunshine through some patchy clouds through our whole trip.
Naturalist,
Vanessa & Alison
