9:00am- It pays to have friends on the water! Our buddies Mark and Royce sent us a text message before we left the dock letting us know of a humpback and minke whale, plus hundreds of dolphins 6 miles straight out of Newport Beach Harbor. We arrived to find exactly that! The dolphin were very playful and were everywhere- the humpback also allowed us some great close looks. We finished off with visiting Abalone Point for a look at the harbor seals.
11:30am- Now that we knew where to go, we returned to the same area as the 9:00am trip. We got even better looks at the humpback whale, a few times within 50 feet of our boat- and lots of bow-riding common dolphin, at least 300.
3:00pm- The whales moved outside our range, we looked high and low but couldn’t locate any spouts. That’s ok, we still had a blast with over 100 very playful common dolphin and a great coastal tour.
5:30pm- MORE dolphin, Captain Ryan found both Offshore Bottlenose and Common Dolphin, for some variety. We went much farther than the other whale watching boats and had some great interaction with really big feeding pods. Probably saw at least 500 dolphin on this trip! Whales again eluded us, for now!