9:00am- Clear skies and calm seas! It was to be the only opportunity we had to whale watch today as the weather soon turned rough. Starting out about 2 miles west from Newport Harbor, Captain Ryan found a good spread of around 200 common dolphin! We played with this pod for about 20 minutes and decided to keep moving to see what else was around. Further offshore(about 5 miles), we looked around but couldn’t find any birds or spouts. Capt. Ryan brought the boat down to Laguna and closer to shore. Here, we had really calm waters and the highlight of the trip, a pod stretching for a least a mile and holding an additional 400 common dolphin. These were even more playful than the first group and making a great show for us. On the coastal tour we also got to see a few harbor seals in Laguna Beach. Talking with the other whale watching boats today, we determined that our sightings were by far the best, as the other boats from Dana Point to Newport Beach had much tougher go of finding animals.