Our ocean adventure this evening was spent surrounded with wildlife and unlikely pairings. It’s the stuff Disney movies are made of!
We braved the swell and made our way down to Pt Loma where a small spout was observed from a smaller humpback whale. Though every time right before the whale would surface, a female sea lion would pop up right next to the humpback! They were clearly interacting together and being best buddies. When the whale would dive, so would the sea lion. It was the sweetest! The dynamic duo wasn’t diving very long as we were only about 5 miles from the coast and in about 250ft of water. We enjoyed this unusually pairing together for about 30 mins before they sadly parted ways. But, we had birds to follow and a superb mixed pod of ~300 short beaked AND long beaked common dolphins. It’s not every day we get to see both subspecies coexisting. It turned into a bit of a feeding frenzy when the committee of elegant terns who had been escorting the Privateer started diving and feeding among the dense pod of dolphins. We traveled as one with the dolphin pod for 5 miles and enjoyed a sliver of a red sunset before having to make our way back to the dock.
-Naturalist Ruth
