This morning we were awakened by the sweet voice of Expedition Leader Paula Tagle announcing that we had bottlenose dolphins off the bow of National Geographic Venture. The dolphins were mesmerizing and stayed with us until just before breakfast.
After breakfast we snorkeled inside the national park, swimming with horse-eyed jacks, a curious hawksbill turtle, and a myriad of colorful reef fish on one of the northernmost coral reefs in the northern hemisphere. Throughout the morning humpback whales came and went, offering us looks at their lives here in their breeding and calving grounds.
Our afternoon was spent looking for even more humpback whales off Gorda Banks. Several animals gave us distant breaches, but the humpback crowd was relatively quiet this afternoon. Just as the sun was setting a large pod of bottlenose dolphins came to the bow and showed off for us in the last rays of sunshine. We both started and ended our daylight hours in the presence of bottlenose dolphins, fitting tribute to the marine mammals here in the Sea of Cortez.
