Image: a group of common dolphins with an amorous male (turned sideways to expose its white belly) making overtures.
2024 10-02 SB Channel
Captain Danny and the crew found calm seas with dense fog all day, a fact that made it hard to located marine mammals, but they DID IT. Sightings for the day: 750 common dolphins and 2 humpback whales.
Small pods of dolphins found the Condor Express just 25 minutes outbound from The Harbor. These were small feeding pods and did not spend much time with the boat. One of the pods was not feeding, but was interested in “socializing.” Everywhere you looked, male and female dolphins were introducing themselves. (See today’s photograph).
After about an hour and a half, we had moved south past the Kelp Farm, and found a small “sucker hole” of brightness in the dense, near zero visibility, fog. Deckhand Chantal caught a glimpse of a humpback on the edge of the fog bank. This turned out to be a pair of whales after considerable effort by Captain Danny and Chantal.
One of the whales did a single full body breach in semi fog, but most people happened to be looking in that direction and caught it mid-air. There were a few instances of trumpet vocalizations. The pair seemed to be preoccupied with feeding subsurface. After 45 minutes or so, the fog fully engulfed everything and we never saw the pair again.
On the way home we encountered larger pods of dolphins.
You never know what Mother Nature has in store.
Bob Perry
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