I’ve got about three weeks before I move out of the bay area. It’s an ending and beginning all in one making the experience bittersweet. I’ll miss the people, the redwoods, the climate, and the whales. While it is possible I’ll see whales in Southern California, when I lived there before I never did. I remember paying to go on a whale paparazzi boat and getting excited that we saw a footprint of a whale. We never saw a whale. That experience is in stark contrast to the Monterey Bay where sightings are so common, I am not surprised to see a whale anytime I’m out on the bay. With three weeks to go one of my buddies who likes to paddle beyond our regular Saturday route from Santa Cruz harbor dropped me a line to see if I’m interested in a whale hunt in the middle of Monterey Bay just outside of Moss Landing. One of the premier locations to whale watch is the middle of the bay directly over a deep underwater canyon. The canyon causes an upswelling of warm water which draws animals the whales like to eat. Anyway, when he asks he knows I’ll say yes.

The sky was overcast when we arrived at Elkhorn Slough to launch. The air temperature was about 65 degrees under cloudy skies. The forecast said it would clear up and be partly sunny by the middle of the day. It was wrong. But we didn’t care, we didn’t go for the weather. Our adventure started out with an ominous note; my buddy cracked his carbon fiber paddle pushing away from the sandy beach landing.  I didn’t bring a backup, so he is stuck with a faulty paddle. Sure enough, before we reached the mile buoy the small crack sheared off the tip leaving him to paddle the day with a lopsided paddle.

Moving straight out of the harbor mouth, we glided past a bob of juvenile seals swimming and carrying on, when I saw in the distance what looked like a tall dorsal fin. What is tall? A male orca could have a dorsal fin up to six foot tall. Hard to miss even at a distance. Could it be an orca? I know orcas are in the bay, but I’d never seen one. In fact, one of the reasons I like to go to the San Juan islands is to see the orcas. My friend says “Maybe it’s a risso”, referring to a dolphin. He was hardly done making his suggestion when we saw two then three other big dorsal fins and then two of the whales came to the surface for a breath. Orcas closer than two miles from the mouth of the harbor. Amazing! We weren’t alone. In a matter of minutes other whale paparazzi boats came over by us to see the orcas. Seeing them I imagined they had in mind a gruesome scene from about 10 years ago where a pod of orcas battered and separated a gray calf from its mother. I imagined they might be hoping for some similar footage. On the other hand that is what the patrons on the boat paid for, whales. Together, the flotilla of commercial boats followed or pushed the pod out towards the open sea, and we lose site of the orcas. But it didn’t matter. We saw orcas!

In the next two hours we observed at least eight other humpbacks. They were feeding, tail slapping and to me, swimming in circles. Lucky for us! As we paddled around we respect the animal’s space and never forget they are wild. This isn’t Sea World and my friends, and I am well aware that this is their natural environment, not ours. We had two occasions during our paddle that illustrate this. We were sitting on the water looking for the next breach and listening intently for the characteristic blow when they surface to take a breath when two humpbacks surfaced right in front of us. Backing up and moving sideways to avoid their path, we had the feeling we had mistakenly parked on the railroad track with the train approaching.

A little later we realized we seemed to be constantly in the pathway of a bob of juvenile seals. We had experienced their behavior during a previous whale hunt. A large group of perhaps 50-60 seals move like a flock of birds quickly swimming, jumping and barking. I’m sure they are following a food source and I suspect they are just letting off some steam and being social. In my mind I think of them like teens who need something to do. Every time we moved around in the area this bob of seals seemed to be moving toward us, from the left, from the right, or coming from behind. After the third or fourth approach it dawned on me that perhaps we were sitting on top of a bait ball. This realization reminded me of a You Tube video I saw of some kayakers in Avila, California who were in the way when a humpback surfaced lunge feeding and they appeared to have been swallowed. As much as I would like to have seen the lunge feeding, I didn’t want to be the lunch. “Maybe we’re on top of a bait ball”, I said. We moved away and continued our viewing from the side.

We observed about a dozen unique whales including the family of orcas. The others were all humpbacks. I had a brief exchange with a sailboat during our humpback encounter. He mentioned to another boat the whales were over by the kayakers and relayed a story of being brushed by manatees when he was in a kayak. He didn’t know I was tuned into his channel so when I responded to him “I don’t want to be brushed against”, he asked who I was. “I’m one of the kayakers”, I replied. “You guys are hardcore”, he said. I don’t know about that; his sailboat was still shorter than a humpback, so I think he was pretty hardcore himself.  

Later when we returned to pack up and clean up the Kate, captain of the Fast Raft boat came over to talk with us. We talked about the experience, and I picked up a few tips about following whales. Later that day she sent us this photo. The captain of the High Spirit got in the act later that day and also sent a photo.

It seems like we often look to other people having fun or unique experiences and say to ourselves, “I’d like to by that guy.” Occasionally I have to pinch myself to be sure it’s really me, as in “Hey, I am that guy”. In this case the guy in the kayak watching wild whales with a friend.

I had a great day on the bay. I had two cameras with me, an Olympus Tough 6 (waterproof) and an Olympus OMD-EM10 MII but I guess I was having too much fun watching and wasn’t able to capture many photos. As you will see in the photos, I could not possibly have been the photographer as I am in many of them. I want to give a thank you to Chris, my fellow kayaker, and Kate, captain of the High Spirits,  who forwarded photos.