Going back to school always brings a melancholy of summer feeling over.
But it felt the most summery out on the ocean today.
It was so calm and beautiful with glittery seas and superb visibility above and below the water with the most mild of swells.
We made our way out to the drop-off and cruised north taking in how pleasantly calm the waters while having non-stop bottlenose dolphin action all trip!
Spread out throughout our waters were ~200 bottlenose scattered in different concentrations, including a nursery pod!
It’s unusual for us to see so many, when a good day is 50 bottlenose dolphins, so I’ll gladly welcome 4x that.
Our all-female crew today was happy to get back out for the sunset trip and catch up with so much more wildlife.
Early in the trip, around the 3-mile line, we welcomed our friends we hadn’t seen much as of recently, the long-beaked common dolphins in a dense pod of ~300 dolphins, complete with so many tiny babies striped with fetal folds.
Beyond the drop-off, we started seeing scattered splashes from what we presumed were our bottlenose buddies from earlier in the day, but we were treated to a pod of another ~300 common dolphins, but this time, they were the short-beaked variety and they were showing off, again with great numbers of babies they were playing and leaping and wiggling in the air. Seeing 3 different kinds of dolphins is a good day on the water but 3 different nursery pods, is exceptional.
Satisfied with our time on the water, we changed direction to start heading back to shore when the silhouette of a mighty fin whale!
It was FINtastic!
This was a short-winded whale going below the surface for 2-5 mins making sure everyone got good looks.
What perfect day on the water isn’t complete with a stunning sunset! It seemed like it was going to be too cloudy earlier in the trip, but the cloud layer lifted making for red and purple skies and orangey pink water.
Just magical.
-Naturalist Ruth
