The Privateer headed out this morning in some gray skies and western swells but didn’t let that stop us from having fun on the water! After a trip to La Jolla Canyon, we came across some playful bottlenose dolphin 🐬(my favorite toothed whale!).
We left the bottlenose and continued towards shore and saw some splashes in the distance…AND A BLOW! It was a group of common dolphins dancing around a huge fin whale! We were so lucky to get great looks before we headed home!
Hoping these fin whales stick around for the week ahead!
Naturalist, Colleen
The whales are BACK — and the buffet is open!
We’re metering tons of food down there on our bottom finders, and
We found the same GARGANTUAN fin whale on both trips, and it was on a mission. Its feeding laps looked exactly like a track field on our GPS — just big, perfect ovals as it cruised through its feeding zone. This whale was incredibly consistent all day: 10 minutes down, 3 minutes up, over and over. That rhythm gave us amazing looks as this absolute unit surfaced from the depths.
Dolphins were around all day in pods of all sizes, but the short‑beaked commons stole the show. They were on fire — launching high out of the water and racing at top speed, porpoising like they were late for something important.
We’re off the water tomorrow for weather, but we’ll be right back at it next week — eager to see what changes the storm stirs up.
Naturalist, Alison
