dolphin/whale watching

Grandma Robb gave us a whale watching tour for Christmas and we went yesterday. We'd read about the migration patterns of the whales to try to figure out when the best time would be to go to maximize our chances of seeing a whale. Right now is supposed to be a good time to see grey whales migrating north out of Baja.
I was a little worried about Jason right off the bat because the water was pretty choppy coming out of the harbor, but he was fine and the ride soon smoothed out.
As we were heading out the drivers saw a pod of dolphins, so we steered that way. It turns out there were hundreds -- yes, hundreds -- of long-beaked dolphins. They were incredibly playful and swam all around, beside and under our boat. They would surf along in the wake created by the boat in groups for four or five. There were several groups of mothers with their babies who were doing quite a bit of jumping. I love dolphins and it was such a treat to see them like that. I was going camera-crazy trying to capture it. At one point Jason had to hold me steady because I kept losing my balance because I was focusing so much on trying to get a good picture. It turns out dolphins are really tricky to photograph because they are constantly popping in and out of the water, darting around and changing directions. But, I got a few shots that I was happy with and I've put them on the picasa page.
After the dolphins we drove out to a spot where there are usually seal lions. And, sure enough, there were some lounging on the buoy. At one point several of them kind of bumped another one off, and then they wouldn't let him back on. They were barking and barking at each other. I thought it was funny, but Jason thought they needed to learn to share the buoy.
Then we went in search of a whale. The drivers said that we all needed to scan the horizon for spouts. So we were all looking, when the girl next to me actually saw a whale's back. I turned and just caught a brief glimpse of him. He was very close to the boat, we had got almost right over him -- which isn't allowed if done intentionally, but we hadn't seen him before. So then we trolled around that area until he came up again. So every few minutes you'd see a spout and then part of his back. [that's what the third picture is -- the black spot in the middle is the whale's back]
On his last dive he kind of waved at us with his tail. It was interesting to see, but the dolphins were much more entertaining. Our drivers said that he was a small grey whale and that he was actually headed south. They said that he was in for a big surprise because he was going to get down to Mexico just in time to turn around and head back again.