Dolphins a Plenty

James S.

Thursday, September 13, 2018

Hello everyone, it’s been a lovely couple of weeks on the water. Beautiful weather and sea life, even though we haven’t seen high numbers of large whales we’ve still had a great variety. We’ve spotted a couple blue whales, humpbacks, minkes, and lots of playful dolphins. Even some special bird sightings! Labor Day has passed but that doesn’t mean whale watching season is over. We had the beautiful opportunity to observe three species of dolphins over the past couple weeks along with our various baleen whales. We’ll also be bringing on our new photo ID interns this month. I wanted to thank Diego, Nika, and Julia for all their hard work over the summer and the efforts they put in to help identify the blue whales we found for Cascadia Research Collective’s project to study and learn as much about the largest whale and animal on the planet.

If you have been looking at the photos you probably noticed the absolutely adorable baby/juvenile dolphins, or calves. Depending on whether or not it is a short beaked or long beaked common dolphin will change which season they primarily are giving birth in, but many species of dolphins can give birth at any time of the year. Short beaked commons typically calve in the winter along the California coast and long beaked commons typically calve in the spring. For both though the gestation is about 10-11 months and calves are born up to 3 feet long (1 meter) and around 25-35 pounds (11-16 kg). So calving “season” for one of our dolphins should be coming up pretty soon, even more reason to visit and get on a whale watch.

Just because it feels like summer is over and everyone is back in school again doesn’t mean you missed an opportunity to get on a whale watch! Harbor Breeze Cruises runs whale watches year round, currently whale watch times are 12 and 3:30 to board. So come on down to Long Beach and get your combo ticket for the Aquarium of the Pacific and Harbor Breeze, explore our thousands of animals on exhibit during our 20th Anniversary, and jump on board a boat in search of the largest animals on the planet.

See you on the water!