It was a beautiful hot and sunny in San Diego but it definitely felt like fall offshore today. Hazy and foggy with a cool sea breeze onboard the Inspiration. That being said everything happened to “fall” into place while following sea birds towards the drop off. Pelicans and gulls with the odd phalarope and northern fulmar in the mix were heading to a huge feeding frenzy about 8 miles from the coast! We had a very active pod of ~200-300 long beaked common dolphins cooperatively feeding along side the birds as well as several California sea lions! The passengers of the Inspiration were treated to a full stampede watching all the long beaked common dolphins take off simultaneously and we followed them to an area of food where we found a southbound humpback whale! This beauty was taking fairly short dive cycles and had kelp draped across its tail stalk. We got the perfect wave goodbye from the humpback showing us its tail flukes on its final dive to send us back to Mission Bay.
We have trips tomorrow on Veteran Day, come out to the Pacific and spend it with the salty crew of SDWW.
-Naturalist Ruth
