After a few of days of work, the next adventure was a Whale Watching cruise. Although it’s called a Whale Watching Tour, after you get out in the bay they announce that if they don’t find whales or dolphins, you get your money back. That’s an important phrase because they pretty much always know where the dolphins are! But that’s OK because even without whales (and we were entirely without whales that day), it was a great trip. First stop was a large buoy in the bay where five or six harbor seals had draped themselves. They were so laid back they didn’t even move when we stopped by.
The ship cruised out further into the bay and found a really big group of Common Dolphins, exactly where the crew knew they would be. And they were amazing!!! We have never seen so many dolphins together in one place - there must have been at least forty. They were feasting on anchovies and as long as we cruised around slowly, they ignored us. But when the boat’s captain revved the engine and raced forward, dolphins from everywhere came racing over to us, just to speed along beside the boat and ride the bow waves. 
We moved a bit further out in the bay, looking for whales. And instead we found a small group of Risso dolphins. This was something new to us. They are larger than most of the dolphins we’ve seen, and they look sort of like narwhales, without the spire. They have rounded heads without the bottlenose that we associate with dolphins.
They are light gray but apparently they scar white. And these guys had a lot of scars!
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