Our 9:00am trip headed towards Laguna Beach; we were the first boat leaving Newport so we had some ground to cover. Thankfully our friend Capt. Tom gave us a heads up of a gray whale cow/calf moving up the line; we found this pair off Victoria Beach in Laguna. After some good looks we went out to sea for a look at our first humpback whale in a week. Our 11:30am trip was able to find the same gray whales from earlier right off Crystal Cove, and we watched them until the Balboa Pier. For the second half of our trip we looked far for dolphin and found a great pod at 7 miles of common dolphin- at least 100. As we were leaving this pod, a different type of dolphin appeared: offshore bottlenose! They are much larger than commons and very playful. Capt. Ryan hadn’t seen a pod of this species since December. Our last trip of the day at 3:00pm we headed straight out in search of the same dolphins, instead we found two humpback whales! And plenty of dolphin, too of course. These large humpbacks feeding in our waters signals that we are approaching the summertime whale watching season!
