What a beautiful day on the water! We enjoyed watching multiple pods of dolphins on both afternoon and sunset trips!
On our afternoon trip, we headed to the SW toward the 9-mile bank. Once we passed the drop-off we encountered a huge pod of ~500 Short-beaked Common dolphins cruising to the north! We got amazing looks as they socialized all around our boat! We witnessed some high flyers as the show-offs breached numerous times! One of them seemed to be apart of a breach-a-thon! It must of breached at least 20x! We spotted some teeny tiny calves too! We continued out to the NW and made it about 10-miles from Mission bay. On our way toward the east, we came across a surprise pod of ~40 Long-beaked Common dolphins. They were going down for dives likely feeding nearby. We spotted a couple of Inshore bottlenose dolphins in the Mission bay jetties! Throughout the tour we encountered a couple Mola mola’s too.
We had an absolutely beautiful sunset trip! We cruised to the west and spotted some big splashes to the west of us. It was a huge pod of ~400 Long-beaked Common dolphins! They were swimming all over the place, first going north, then east and then back south! Regardless, we got some amazing interactions as they zoomed up to us bow-ride and surf in our wake! We even spotted second small pod of about 10 Commons that was likely a bachelor pod! All large males zooming around catching up with us to surf with our wake! We observed some Short-beaked Common dolphins to the west that were slowly meandering about, not going anywhere fast. They were really spread out! We even spotted a Marlin resting on the surface! We got a little closer but spooked and watched it splash around before diving into the depths! The sunset was spectacular!
We hope to sea ya on a trip soon!
Naturalist,
Vanessa
