9:00am- Calm seas greeted us this morning, making animals easy to find! Capt Ryan found a pod of 300 common dolphin right off the bat, just 1.5 miles from Newport Harbor. We had some great fun with these before moving along. Captain Taylor soon found a pod of 25 bottlenose dolphin that both of our Zodiac boats shared. Our next sighting was 200 short-beaked common dolphin, a pod that was further offshore but jumping a lot and eager to play with the boat. Finally, our friend Capt. Tom on the Fast Cat from Dana Point located a humpback whale off Laguna Beach, so we were able to finish up our trip with a sighting of this animal, including a breach!
11:30am- Captain Taylor tracked down the humpback whale again from this morning off the Balboa Pier and got his passengers some great looks. Strangely enough all the dolphin that we saw earlier had swam out of the area, but we did get to see a large mako shark- maybe that’s why the dolphin left!