We had a bit of hazey smoke at the beginning of our trip. Austin, our deckhand and one of our captains, said he saw a brush fire beneath Interstate 5 and 805 just a few miles away on his commute to work. We enjoyed the barking and antics of the California sea lions at the floating bait dock, our flippered friends, and then we had pelicans, gulls, cormorants and egrets, our feathered friends, being dispersed by two fishing vessels, but a few intrepid, persistent Great egrets obtained some of the unsuspecting fish swimming around in the netted bait pens below the wooden slats.
Over the Nine-Mile Bank in 2000’ of water, we found about 500 Long-beaked common dolphins (LBCD’s) that showed us their strength, power, grace and beauty as they expertly maneuvered to jostle into position to get a “free-ride” off of our bow and surf our wake. We continued toward the northwest and found another pod of LBCD’s that took time out of foraging and courtship behavior displays to come play with our boat, the M/V Privateer. We enjoyed seeing some nursery pods of cow-calf pairs and the antics of the breeding adults porpoising and racing off in formation, a type of showing-off and dominance hierarchy and competition for getting attention from other dolphins in the super-pod. Helicopters and small navy vessels were seen, along with numerous pleasure boats off of the coast of San Diego, “America’s Finest City.” —Biologist Greg McCormack
