We had two amazing trips aboard the Inspiration today! For our afternoon trip, we set out to the west in search of all wildlife. It was a bit quiet to start but we began to follow the drop-off to the north. Then only a mile up, we sighted a big pod of ~150 Long-beaked Common dolphins! They were headed straight for us! At the same instance, we sighted a whale back towards the coast! Since we were so close to catching up with the Common dolphins, we hung out for a bit and then zoomed over to catch up with the whale. It was a Humpback headed south but had really long dive times. We sighted spouts of it down in the distance but never saw it again as it gave us the slip. Still a beautiful ride all around!
On our sunset trip, the clouds cleared and we started to soak up the sunshine! Our visibility really opened up for us allowing us to see down to the Coronado Islands in Mexico! We sighted a huge feeding frenzy on the drop-off. What we thought was mostly birds, turned out to be a MEGApod of Long-beaked Common dolphins actively feeding on numerous bait balls! We bounced from feeding frenzy to the next enjoying the amazing Common dolphins! They breached, porpoised and surfed beside us! We were even lucky enough to see them corralling small schooling fish! The scene was absolutely incredible! The sky lit up as the sun was going down! We even got a quick glimpse of the big fire ball dropping below the clouds!
We have two trips tomorrow so come on out for some whale and dolphin fun!
Naturalist,
Vanessa
