We first headed out of the harbor around 8am, looking out for sea otters.

We headed west until we got to the deep canyons of Monterey Bay. At that point we spotted a group of 50-100 Risso’s Dolphins. There were newborn calves in the group, identifiable by the presence of fetal folds. The calves stuck close to their mothers.

Risso’s Dolphins do not bowride like smaller dolphins might, so we moved at slow speeds around the animals. After we left the Risso’s , we headed west again for a bit, where we found a few humpback whales.

 

Two of the humpbacks were feeding together while birds and sea lions flocked around them. We spent about twenty minutes with these animals.

After that we headed back to the south, where there were reports of more humpback whales from other whale watching boats. When we approached, we found a humpback mother and calf.

The calf was breaching for several minutes straight, allowing for lots of opportunities to photograph it.

We got a good view of the ventral side of the whale, where the umbilicus was visible. We also saw fluke dives from both animals and some pectoral fin slaps from the calf.

After spending some time with the mother and calf we continued on south in search of some reported Pacific White Sided dolphins, but the wind was picking up and we eventually had to turn around and head back to the dock.

On the way in we stopped to look at some very cute sea otters who were eating mussels inside the harbor.

-Allison

This post was adapted from a blog, read the original here