When we all woke up this morning, we thought we'd already had our cetacean fix for the week with the wonderful encounter of a pod of Bryde's whales yesterday evening. From first light, however, we were inundated with dolphin sightings.
First of all, we spotted bottlenose dolphins around Roca Redonda. It was shortly afterwards, upon our exciting countdown south, towards the equatorial line, that we happened upon a large pod of about 250 common dolphins. We delayed our crossing as we turned west to follow them.
Finally, in our Zodiac ride, several of us cruised along with another pod of bottlenoses. The photo was taken using our underwater digital video from the Zodiac. What a show! The video, viewed later during our recap session, revealed a sea lion mingling with the dolphins, weaving in and out of their paths, and porpoising occasionally in their wake. It seems as though sea lions are truly out there to enjoy themselves as the footage showed just that. After our geology presentation from Paula Tagle, a pre-lunch encounter with possibly the same pod of common dolphins began to make our guests think that these animals are always around.
A 'glassy' ocean enabled a calm snorkel and such great potential to spot even more out at sea. The non-walkers did just that: another pod of bottlenoses riding the bow wave of the Zodiac was more than enough to complete our 'dolphin' day.
