No, we didn’t watch whales from the kayak, we were on the Point Sur Clipper of Monterey Bay Whale Watch. (Kayak Connection did have whale watching paddles earlier in the year, but we didn’t learn about them before that season ended.) Acting on tips from Bay Nature magazine’s Twitter feed (they provided links to one of their web-only articles and an SFgate article), we used one of Laura’s mid-week vacation days to go down to Monterey. The water was pretty calm so we don’t know whether it was the less-drowsy form of Dramamine or just good conditions that saved us from seasickness (actually not a single person on our boat succumbed). It was a fairly overcast morning (the fog had returned the night before after a few scorching days) so we had good conditions for viewing (less glare).
Humpback dorsal
We saw blues (endangered), humpbacks (endangered), and Risso’s dolphins. We saw a mola mola who came right up to the the boat and then under it. We also saw many birds including black-footed albatross, shearwaters, and murre mother/chick pairs. The murres who had filled up on krill had a hard time flying as we approached; their full tummies caused them to kind of skip like a rock on the water’s surface, their bellies bouncing on the water, blup blup, blup.
We saw a lot more humpbacks than blues because they were lunge-feeding in which they scoop the krill at the surface. They were usually in pairs, engaging in cooperative feeding. The blues were singular and pretty shy; we generally saw them briefly and far off. There was one that surfaced relatively close and as it dove it was coming directly at our boat so we saw pretty much the whole length. Incredible! Never thought we’d see a blue, always thought they kept far out from shore. You always knew you’d had your last glimpse of a whale when you saw the fluke rising up as they took a deeper dive.
Humpback fluke
Of course, the whales are generally difficult to photograph as they are mostly underwater. But at the end of the outing we did encounter the humpback that the whale watching community has dubbed Propeller, so named for the propeller scars on his back. He has a fondness or curiosity for boats and came very close.
Our weekends have been taken up with family, friends, illness, travel, and house chores. Though we love to see family and friends, we hope that house chores and illness will let up so we can get out for a paddle. However, our front yard is looking less like a dump with John’s new fence, our new experience laying pavers for the bin corral (the humongous recycle bin fits through the new gate opening), and gracious and multitudinous donations of prunings from our friend Christy and the Arizona garden. I think we may have ended up planting too much, but we’ll see what survives our drab thumbs.
