// In Plain Sight Blog with Nate Collins Photo //
Images below are posted at 1060×706 at 72dpi. Full size images available for printing / image licensing.
I’d been keeping an eye out to jump on a smaller boat for the last couple months.
I’m spoiled and can wait for days that aren’t fully booked and ironically came across a trip with Offshore Blue Adventures that was only half full, on Labor Day. (that new early west coast school start, I’m told for AP testing advantages, has a huge knock on effect on the summer economies…)
Anyhow. What an awesome day out on a small 21′ Zodiac RIB. Got some unique perspectives low to the water and will absolutely fit it in the schedule again.
Above:
Gonna start with the obvious: it’s a pretty unique perspective to see a Dolphin leap over your head on the open ocean. I can only imagine how cool it would be to be in a stampede where they want to be active like this en masse.
I was lucky to capture really the only big jump from a pod that was just cruising around. It was just a super cool moment and pretty hard to describe.
There were also a ton of pelagic birds like the Shearwater pictured. Not sure if the quantity was more obvious just randomly from the day or if the smaller / faster boat gets on them quicker or something.
You can see the remnants of fetal folds on the Common Dolphin calf which is always cool to see. I didn’t get a pic but one of the absolute smallest baby dolphins I’ve seen leaped in front of the boat with mom – it had to be 15 ish inches at most…
Another really cool thing was being well offshore, alone in a 21′ boat with this Minke Whale. Minke’s are relatively small, but it was still bigger than the boat. It was the four of us on the boat and the whale for 20 minutes or so. Just a super cool experience.
Below:
I generally don’t photograph the Sea Lions on the bait barge but I wanted to see the perspective change. Got a couple interesting ones.
The closeups of the Sea Lion pair seem like they’re harmonizing a cheesy song for some reason to me.
They tend to play king of the mooring buoy and wrestle on it constantly.
Last, a look at how heavy they really are. This is a bait barge and you can put several large adult men on it and it doesn’t really move – but you get just a few sea lions on it and its flat against the water (I’ve seen it where one end is a foot or two down if they all pile on one side to sleep)
Hope you enjoyed the photos and thanks for the read!
Nate@NateCollinsPhoto com
