Captain Bryan brought the M/V Inspiration out just a few hundred meters for our first wildlife sighting of the day, a haul-out of California sea lions on the end of the privately owned floating bait dock and the yellow mooring ball. We also so our feathered friends, including cormorants, pelicans, snowy and great egrets and the ubiquitous gulls. Later, we saw shearwaters, loons, surf scoters and a flock of Brant geese.
We found a pod of about 3 Coastal bottlenose dolphins in the Mission Bay Channel entrance. They are powerful swimmers and are one of the larger members of the dolphin family. They are the archetype, meaning they represent the dolphin family with the conspicuous falcate or curved, crescent-shaped dorsal fin. They have the bottlenose shaped proboscis or beak and inside the mouth are the cone-shaped, pointy teeth. Porpoises have flatter, spade-shaped teeth, triangular dorsal fins, are generally smaller and less social than the dolphins and belong in a different family.
We went way out to the 9-Mile Bank and came across a pod of about 500 long-beaked common dolphins foraging on forage fish, likely the sardines. We enjoyed their playful demeanor, as they came up to our vessel and surfed our wake and jockeyed for position off of our bow where our moving vessel provides a pressure wave. The dolphins get the “free ride”, without the need to move the caudal peduncle and tail flukes up and down to propel forward. The sun also came out from the overcast marine layer.
Continuing to the northwest, we found another baitball of fish with squadrons of Brown Pelicans plunge-diving into the sea for the abundant fish. Gulls, shearwaters and cormorants got in on the action as well. All this is a visual definition of the word fecundity. The oceans have a sense of abundance and we got to witness it. Hope to see you again on a future San Diego Whale Watch, everybody. —Interpretive Naturalist Greg McCormack
