Friday, August 7, 2026
Just outside the harbor on a glassy morning aboard Sanctuary, we encountered an expansive pod of approximately one thousand long-beaked common dolphins. As the dolphins moved through the area, a humpback whale breached suddenly directly in front of us, interacting with the surrounding pod at the surface.
Long-beaked common dolphins frequently travel in large coastal herds, often overlapping with feeding humpbacks in productive waters. Breaching behavior can serve multiple biological purposes, including social signaling or dislodging surface parasites, and seeing this dynamic unfold alongside active dolphins offers a clear look at local multi-species interactions.
During our morning trip, we recorded a total of fifteen humpback whales across Monterey Bay. While the breaching whale drew immediate attention near the dolphins, several other humpbacks were dispersed nearby, actively feeding in the calm waters.
Flat, glassy conditions like today's afford excellent visibility for tracking these subtle behavioral details. Observing how different marine mammal species share and navigate the same waters remains a consistently rewarding aspect of our work on the bay.