Tuesday September 2, 2025 – PM
Once we got past the jetties and into the Pacific Ocean, we saw the whitecaps, indicating a wind speed of 9–14 knots or 10–15 mph. The larger the area that the wind blows across the ocean and the stronger the wind, the larger the swell. Fetch is a mariners term, along with port/starboard, bow/stern, etc. Captain Bryan brought us northwest, off of Point LaJolla. We found one pod of 150 common dolphins and could see more splashing two miles away on the horizon, just 5-miles from the Cove and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. This next pod was a super-pod. We had at least 1800 toothed whales, the long-beaked common dolphins cavorting and foraging and porpoising out of the water, churning up the seas. We soon saw the blows of three whales, feeding in the same massive bait-ball area, about 1-mile long and a quarter mile across. We saw the two fin whales spouting and their distinctive, prominent dorsal fin. Then the humpback whale, and sure enough, it breached, creating a tremendous splash and entertaining the hooting and hollering passengers. What an epic trip seeing so much fecundity, a tremendous biodiverse food web of sea lions, dolphins and two types of whales. —Biologist Greg McCormack
