Bottlenose Dolphins 7/13/25
A few days ago I was thinking about the fact that it had been a pretty long time since I’d seen my friendly finned friends. The Humpbacks have been dominating the local facebook feeds, but the elusive dolphins were splashing through my thoughts. I was really wishing they would come say hello and welcome me back from my Australia trip.
The next day, rumors of a Humpback mother/calf double-lunge at Devil’s Slide were racing across the interwebz. I dashed out to meet up with my friend Chris, who was the originator of said rumors. Most of the activity had died down by the time I got there, but we stood vigilant in case things picked up again. With his phone in hand, Chris exclaimed “OH! Someone just posted there’s dolphins at Fort Funston!” He then asked if I had made a similar time/distance chart as the one I made for the Gray Whales, to see if we had time to try and catch them at another location. I said I did (though it’s actually just the Gray Whale chart. Based on my past observations, the Gray Whale chart actually works pretty well for these dolphins). Looking it up, we had just enough time to get to Mussel Rock if they were continuing south from Fort Funston. We very quickly decided to abandon the whales and zip up to Mussel Rock.
We waited for a bit, but they failed to make an appearance. The interwebz was lighting up again with Humpback activity back at Devil’s Slide, so I decided to head back there. Again, by the time I got there, things had died down and the fog had moved in, limiting visibility. I waited for a while, but thoughts of the dolphins continued leaping through my head. I decided I’d go back to Mussel Rock and just wait there until the dolphins decided to come say hello to me.
They took their sweet time, but after 5 hours sitting on the edge of a cliff, getting battered by the wind, the dolphins finally took pity on me and came over to say hello and welcome me back.
I wish I had the time to get down to beach level, so that I could be closer to them, but they really snuck up on me. By the time I saw them, there was no time to make the hike down to beach level. So it was a somewhat distant greeting, but I was elated nonetheless. After swimming and playing around for a little bit, they continued south, so I decided to climb back up the hill, jump in my Jeep and head over to Oceanaire. I was able to catch sight of them from there, but before they reached me, they turned around and headed north. I hurried back to Mussel Rock to try and get a little more time with them and managed to get there just in time. Chris decided to be more ambitious and headed down to beach level. He got there just in time to get a few fleeting views and photos of them before they swam off to the wild blue yonder.
For the eagle-eyed viewers, you may notice that photo12 and photo13 are actually the same photo. Photo12 is just a tighter crop of photo13. I was photographing the dolphin at the top and didn’t even realize the other three were surfacing nearby, so I caught them by accident.
Thank you my flippered friends for dropping by to say hi.
