On our morning trip, we cruised out to the west and spotted a few splashes out in deeper water! We got to the drop-off and were stoked to see an awesome pod of ~75 Offshore bottlenose dolphins headed to the south! There were lots of little juveniles and cow/calf pairs sighted throughout the whole area! We got to witness some big breaches and leaps near the Privateer! We carried on and spotted more splashes to the west and came across another pod of about 50 Offshore bottlenose dolphins! They were just as fun and surface active! We waved goodbye and turned in toward the coast. Along the way, we encountered a fun active pod of ~100 Short-beaked Common dolphins racing toward us! There were so small in comparison to the big bottlenose! We saw plenty of tiny football-sized calves out there! Many of the surfed our wake as we cruised in. Can’t forget to mention, we also spotted a rare bird soaring the sky: either a Masked or Nazca booby! Birders, please let us know! 🙂
On our afternoon trip, we cruised out to the west again and as soon as we got to the drop-off we spotted splashes! This time it was only a small pod of about 5 individuals slowly popping up to the surface every now and again. We waited it out because our echosounder revealed there was a bunch of food down below around ~100-200 feet. After awhile several more bottlenose dolphins appeared out in the distance! We enjoyed the amazing acrobatics of the high flyers! They leaped sky-high about 15-20ft in the air! We loved listening for their communicating whistles under the boat! We spotted plenty of little babies all around us! Including a fun nursery pod of ~7 juveniles that raced up to our boat every time Captain Michael revved the engines! We even came across of small school of ~3 flying fish! They popped up one right after the other! One of which I got an awesome photo of!
It was great day to be on the water! We hope you all will join us for a trip soon!
Naturalist,
Vanessa
