Humpback Cow-Calf Pairs and Stampeding Common Dolphins

Across our morning and mid-day trips aboard Sanctuary, we logged twelve humpback whales, including several cow-calf pairs moving through Monterey Bay. The highlight of the second trip was an extended encounter with a lively calf that repeatedly lifted its rostrum to expose prominent dermal tubercles before tail-lobbing and banking into shallow sideways dives, trailing a pectoral fin above the surface like a shark fin.

Long-beaked common dolphins surrounded the boat throughout both trips, numbering roughly one thousand individuals spread across the bay. Toward the end of the mid-day run, their behavior shifted distinctly as scattered sub-groups gathered into a sustained stampede, traveling southwest in continuous, tightly synchronized waves across the chop.

Productivity across the water column was further evidenced by dense bird activity, where two thousand sooty shearwaters, one thousand Brandt’s cormorants, and hundreds of common murres and brown pelicans fed. Once in the harbor, a few sea otters and harbor seals rounded out a day defined by dynamic marine mammal behavior.