I have mixed feelings about this experience, overall. My husband and I went on the dolphin cruise, and due to low tourism because of covid, we had the whole catamaran to ourselves. It was a nice enough boat and had restrooms on board, which was nice. As we took off from the jetty, a large male cape fur seal joined us on board, lured by fish. Later on, another male seal and several pelicans joined us on board, also similarly lured by (and hand fed) fish. While that was a cool experience to have the wild animals so up close and personal, I'm also generally not a fan of messing with nature and feeding (and consequently semi-taming) wild animals, as that causes then to become dependent on humans and can negatively impact their ability to survive on their own. It's also just not a good practice generally. So I appreciated the experience, but not the methods. (For the record, this appeared to be a common practice along several of the cruise operators, so I'm not sure that using a different company would change anything). Otherwise it was an okay cruise. The guide was friendly, interesting, and knowledgeable, and we had no complaints from that perspective. We saw tons of sea lions at pelican point (as expected) and also some heaviside dolphins not far from there. After we saw the dolphins we basically turned around and went back, but it would have been nice if we'd gone out further to search for whales, since the guide said they were definitely in season now and also recently spotted. So that was a little disappointing. Also the captain was smoking cigarettes for a good portion of the cruise, which permeated even to the open-air front of the boat where we were seated, and also made use of the restrooms rather unpleasant as the whole interior reeked of cigarette smoke for a time. So that was another issue. Overall we had a decent time and thought the guide was good, and do appreciate them running a cruise for just the two of us with no other bookings, but due to the other issues mentioned above, I'm not sure we'd do it again.
