We eased into the 5th of July with perfect Summer weather and a lot of dolphins! We encountered not one but 2 pods of offshore bottlenose dolphins on our 9am trip, they were bow riding and showing off with big breaches.
Further south we also came upon a pod of ~100 Long beaked common dolphins in travel mode heading towards downtown San Diego.
On the afternoon trip we headed to La Jolla canyon, where thousands on terns were also heading, so we took an educated guess into that’s where all the food was.
We hit the jackpot out there running back into our bottlenose dolphin friends who were doing some people watching also.
Then, out of nowhere BREACH! A humpback launched out of the water announcing its presence, it was our first indication there was a whale in the area. It was taking very short 2 breath dives at 2 minute intervals and started following the bird piles. We could see fish boils of small bait-balls at the surface, perfect conditions to see lunge feeding and we got lucky there too. Repetitive lunges at the surface, bait fish pouring out of the humpbacks mouth. It was incredible.
Our sunset trip is departing shortly, stay tuned to see if they find our humpback friend.
-Naturalist Ruth
