Fast Fiction

Today was the annual traning trip for the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium’s whale watch docent naturalist program.

I was worried that the trip would be canceled for bad weather, after all, we have huge swells hitting our coast from storms far out in the Pacific, but today was remarkably calm. Even though it was raining when I left the house, I called the landing to get confirmation that things were a go. And they were. It was still drizzly as we left on the Voyager but the water was glassy and the swells were rather tame.

Unlike a regular whale watching trip, this one was led by no less than a half-dozen naturalists including: Diana McIntyre, Bernardo Alps, Diane Alps, Alisa Schulman-Janiger and John Olguin. Though the whales eluded us (it’s still early in the season) we did find two pods of long-beaked common dolphins. The first was a large one with probably 800 individuals feeding on some herring (or some other small silvery fish) along with a large variety of gulls and pelicans with the occasional sea lion thrown in.

But you really just wanna see photos, right? Click for larger versions:

Rocky Point as seen from the boat.

Common Dolphin pod.

Long-beaked common dolphin.

Possibly the same long-beaked common dolphin.

Palos Verdes Peninsula as seen from Santa Monica Bay

A Brown Pelican in breeding plumage.