Sunny skies and a fresh breeze greeted our guests as they waited in line next to our floating dock in Quivira Basin, on Mission Bay. We noticed two Snowy Egrets and a black-crowned night-heron just below and the bright orange, State marine fish, the Garibaldi. Once underway to visit the nearby floating bait dock, we saw Great egrets, Brown pelicans, Brandt’s cormorants, Heermann’s gulls, Western gulls and about a dozen California sea lions resting.
Just 50-minutes into our trip, Captain Brian Piersall found some Offshore bottlenose dolphins in 1000’ of water, just behind the wake of the northbound historic yacht “America”. These large members of the dolphin family were not feeding but were involved in ritualized courtship displays and other social behaviors, including mating. We saw nursery pods of cow/calf pairs and plenty of cavorting and high porpoising, breaching and tails slaps.
Something was in the air, as 45-minutes later we saw another pod of Offshores doing the same behavior. Oftentimes we see them traveling and foraging on fish with dozens or hundreds of seabirds circling and diving down to the surface to get the “left-overs” or obtain prey by their own unique hunting techniques. These dolphins were different, as there were no seabirds in sight, likely due to the calm winds. Seabirds take the advantage of riding currents of air to find prey in an easier, less metabolically expensive manner. We did have a record number of balloons at the surface of the sea for the summer, and so we maneuvered the vessel and our gaff hook to bring some of them aboard and throw them away, properly. Some sea turtles will mistakenly eat them, thinking the deflated balloons are jellyfish, clogging the digestive tracts. “Balloons Blow” is a website dedicated to trying to reduce the impact of balloons in the ocean, part of the marine debris that can harm marine wildlife. We always have the possibility of seeing amazing sights. Hope to see you soon on a future whale watch! —Naturalist Greg McCormack
