Breech, Berth

Evidently January is going to be the nautical month: two Sundays ago, we gawped at the great white shark, and yesterday, we went whale-watching.

The trip was an unqualified success, partly due to the presence of an actual California gray whale (always a bonus when whale-watching) and partly due to our captain's persistent managing of our expectations.

"This isn't Sea World," he'd warn. "These whales are in their natural habitat, doing what they do."

Another time: "We can't guarantee where the whales will be or how long you'll see them. These are migrating whales. They're not here to entertain you."

And: "You know, these whales are very leery of boat traffic, so it's not like they'll see us and come swimming over. You'll be lucky to see a whale."

I wondered how many irate passengers screaming, "I was promised whales! Where are the whales?" he'd to deal with during the season. It seemed perfectly obvious to us that we were paying our money to take our chances, but there's always someone who can't or won't understand that viewing animals doing what they do where they do it, isn't the same as going to a zoo.

Anyway, we were bobbing around on the bright blue sea; a low fog obscured where we were, so all we could see was a milky haze and a short horizon. But it was sunny enough -- when I got back to the car, I noticed my freckles had returned in full force after all of two hours on the water.

So conditions for spotting blow -- the heart-shaped plume of watery air the whale expels* -- weren't optimal. Yet we eventually found a whale.

It was migrating south, just lazily scudding along immediately below the water's surface and slowly drifting up only enough to breathe out and breathe in again. In terms of ceteacean stunts, it wasn't nearly so impressive as what dolphins routinely do (i.e. leap about), but it's still an awesome sight to view a few square yards of mottled gray flesh. Your imagination fills in the rest.

A brief interlude: I've always had a problem grasping exactly how big an animal is because I simply don't think in terms of feet and ratios. Intellectually, I get that a whale is roughly eight times longer than I am and many more than eight times my weight, but I rarely have the chance to stand next to anything eight times my size. I don't have a spatial grasp of the difference in size. But watching a few feet of whale and realizing I'm seeing only a fraction of an animal was a handy way to develop that fine spatial understanding real quick.

Back to the story ... the whale lazily snorkeled again (that's the term the captain used) before we noticed the back curling up from the nearly-flat slice we had seen to a thick, semi-circular arch. The whale was arching its back in anticipation of a deep dive. We saw the tail as it fluked and felt very lucky to have seen so much of the whale, albeit a few yards at a time.

Then the whale decided to make like an American Idol contestant and showboat for our attention. After a dazzling sequence of fluking and snorkeling, the whale fluked -- and then breached. It shot out of the water like a Whack-a-Mole, and then hit at a 90-degree angle. There was no thundrous clap of blubber hitting water, just our spontaneous applause. The captain continued managing expectations with: "I hope you know this is extremely rare behavior in these waters. We're not likely to see that again." Nobody minded. The whale fluked a few more times, then snorkeled another half-dozen or so before we parted company, and our boat reluctantly headed back to San Pedro.

There were a number of volunteers from the American Cetacean Society's whale counting project, and frankly, that strikes me as one of the most enjoyable volunteer gigs in the world. On the way back into port, we spied a number of California sea lions sunning themselves off the buoys at the edge of the harbor. In terms of amusing marine mammals, it's a close race between the sea lions and the dolphins. (We saw Pacific Whiteside dolphins last year. This year, no such luck.)

By the way, the elephant seals aren't even in the competition. We saw them lolling about Piedras Blancas as we drove Highway 1 from Monterey to Big Sur to L.A. two weekends ago, and as you might expect from any animal that's spending its time laid out on the sand, the capering factor is nil.

Still, I can't complain. I live someplace where I can see all manner of extremely cool marine animals all the time. If I could only get over the niggling craving for seafood after each viewing, I'd be set.

* And why can you see blow? As whales dive, the pressure compresses their bodies -- which makes it easier for them to swim -- so the air in their lungs is compressed too. When whales exhale, they breathe out 85-90% of the air in their lungs. Said compressed air exits the blowhole at tremendous velocity, and takes any water in the blowhole, plus surrounding sea water, with it. So what you're seeing is a big jet of air, in which a lot of water happens to be mixed. Cool, huh?

Comments

[Mary]

That sounds like a really cool way to spend a day. I would love to see that sometime myself. Thanks for sharing it with your faithful readers.