9:00am: Captain Devo on the Ocean Explorer was already out, and let us know of a humpback whale 7 miles offshore of Newport Beach. We had nice weather and zoomed out there in no time. There were, as has been the norm recently, up to 1,000 common dolphin on the way out and in the area of the whale. This humpback was about 35 feet long and showed very well for us! A few times we were within 20 feet of this amazing animal. On the way in Capt Ryan found a Gray Whale cow/calf pair to finish things off!
11:30am: Right as we cleared the harbor we encountered a pod of about 20 pacific white sided dolphins; it has been a few weeks since our last sighting. They are beautiful! Soon after we left them, we found another Cow/Calf Gray Whale pair, but they disappeared after a few minutes. We kept going in the direction that we left the humpback whale previously. We eventually found it- and thousands of dolphin- 4 miles from home. It looked very similar to the one we saw earlier, but when we saw the tail were able to tell it was a different animal. Again, some great close looks at this animal. Another successful day in May!