Super Bowl Sunday with a Super Pod of Gray Whales and a Super Pod of Common Dolphins

/ Alison

February 13th 2022

7 North Bound Gray Whales 0 South Bound 4 hours

The LA Rams prepared to play the Cincinnati Bengals for the LVI Super Bowl at the new SoFi Stadium earlier today and WON !!!! While along the coast 1,000+ Common Dolphins stampeded across the Santa Monica Bay past Point Dume then out to deeper waters heading towards the Channel Islands. A super pod of 6 Gray Whales followed and were joined by one more migrating north gray whale closer to the horizon.

Super sized stampede of hunting/feeding common dolphins heading west across the Santa Monica Bay passing the point over a mile out heading towards the horizon. That long white strip in the top of photo is the commotion in the ocean the dolphins made-going too fast to even capture the leaping and porpoising out of the water!
Point Dume Lifeguard Carter Baldwin in the QRV (Quick Response Vehicle) paying close attention to the swimmers and the water commotion as the dolphins stampede through the flat calm ocean.

Double flukes, from two of six whales, in a tight, fast moving pod traveling north (west) along the coast of Malibu at Point Dume State Beach, California.
Three of six gray whales in a tight pod migrating north (west) along the coast of Point Dume.
Hazy smog layer at the horizon but ocean so flat you can see the topography of the Channel Islands with Anacapa first followed by Santa Cruz in the background.
Calm flat ocean, Santa Barbara Island seen peaking through the hazy marine layer at the horizon.
LA County Lifeguard Carter Baldwin keeping close watch on beach from the QRV (Quick Response Vehicle).
View of Leo Carillo and Santa Monica Mountains to the North seen here with some atmospheric distortion near the horizon but clear shot of the topography not typically seen this clearly, thanks to the calm flat ocean today. It was so calm we could hear the music and people singing on this fast moving boat as it traveled through the transect.
Boat passing Bird Rock (pinnacles) directly over the whales path, thankfully no whales were present at the time.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s