Saturday August 9, 2025 Sunset
Our sunset trip began with overcast skies. An incredibly busy Quivira Basin with all sorts of recreational boaters, SUP, sit on top kayaks, pontoons and some kind of bicycle on a paddle board. Out beyond the Mission Bay Channel entrance we saw a couple of flying fish, a lot of pelicans in formation, a few scattered cormorants and several US Navy warships, including the ship M/V Ocean Valor. This is an offshore support vessel platform, using Military Sealift Command fleet experimentation, pertaining to weapon systems. There was an escort of about 8 smaller vessels surrounding it.
We came across a pod of some two to three hundred Long-beaked common dolphins.
They were found about 5 nautical miles southwest of Cabrillo National Monument. We could see the Hotel del Coronado in the background of the porpoising dolphins. After making a turn-around close to the Mexican-American border, we came across two more pods of Common dolphins. We estimated 2 pods of 300 and 1 pod of 200 for a grand total of 800 dolphins. We did see a couple of Mola mola or ocean sunfish. The lovely yellow-orange crepuscular rays, like shafts of light passing through rafters of an old bard, shone through the low clouds, adding a splash of color at sunset. We hope that you tell others about our whale watching trips and we’ll see you soon!
