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Whale Watching
In
early January my friend Emiko suggested that we go whale watching. I told her
that I thought the prime whale watching season was in late Feb. or March. At
the end of Feb. Emiko again suggested that we go whale watching so we set a
date for the 23rd of February. Sally said that she was interested so Emiko made
reservations at the Long
Beach Sport Fishing to go whale watching. Sally and I had no problems finding
the place. I think the tickets were $14 each. We talked to some of the people
there who told us that a number of weeks before they had seen whales with calves.
I was beginning to think that I had given Emiko bad advice about the dates and
that perhaps we had missed the migration season. Both Emiko and I had been whale
watching once before. On our previous trips we had each seen one whale. Our
tickets said that we would start at 10 a.m. and I was quite surprised to find
that we started at almost exactly 10 a.m. This was quite different from many
other boating experiences that I've had. The Long Beach Harbor is very commercial
and we passed my freight boats on our way out of the harbor. On of the more
interesting boats that we passed was the Sea
Launch which is a boat used to launch satellites into space from the ocean.
The harbor is quite large and it took us over a half hour to reach the breakwater
where the harbor ends.
Shortly
after we got out of the harbor we passed this strange creature. It is difficult
to tell which end is the head and which end is the back (I think the head is
to the left). The people on the boat told us that this was a Sun Fish. When
we got back I looked up Sun Fish
on the web and found out that they are actually called Mola mola. I'm not
sure if this really was a Sun Fish or not since they tend to live in Tropical
or temperate seas and the coast of California may be too cold for them. This
guy did look like the pictures of Sun Fish on the web. He was about 5 feet long,
but if he was a Mola mola then he was a small one. The Sun Fish web site said
that these fish could grow to be two tons and had a photo of a diver next to
one that was about 4 times larger than the diver.
We
were about 15 minutes out of the harbor when we spotted our first whale. Actually
we spotted a pod of 4 whales. At first all we could see was a spout, but as
we got closer we could see the occasional back of a whale. The whales would
surface and remain there for several minutes, then they would dive and resurface
about 5 minutes later. The problem with whales is that they really aren't that
good to photograph. Most of the time you can only see a part of their back which
in a photo is just a dark patch of black on a dark blue ocean. You have to be
fast, usually by the time you see their spot and swing your camera around to
get a picture you have missed the best part. Occasionally you will be luck and
get a picture of the tail fluke, which is about the only thing that anyone can
recognize as being part of a whale. This was one place where my 35mm camera
was much better than my digital camera. With the digital camera there is a delay
between the time I press the shutter and when the picture is actually taken.
On fast moving animals like whales this delay means that you miss a lot of shots.
Eventually I switch to the 35mm only to take pictures. One thing to look for
in some of the pictures is the whales "foot print". When the whales
surfaces they leave an oval of dark smooth water where they were. It is very
interesting.
About
15 minutes after seeing the whales we spotted a pod of dolphins to the north
(when I say we spotted a pod of dolphins I really me the people piloting the
boat spotted them). Since the whales were heading north we decided to leave
the whales for a bit and move to where the dolphins were. As we got closer,
the dolphins swam towards our boat. The dolphins are much better subjects for
photographs. Since they came right up to the boat we were able to see them a
lot better. And, instead of remaining mostly underwater then dolphins would
leap out of the water allowing us to see all of them, unlike the whales who
would only tease us with small glimpse of them. The dolphins were very fast
so I didn't get as many good photos as I hoped. If I go again I will bring my
other camera which allows me to set the shutter speed. After a while the whales
caught up to us so we had whales on our left side and dolphins on our right
side. This was a three hour trip and soon our time was up so we bid the whales
and dolphins farewell and headed back to the harbor.
On
the way back to the harbor we stopped by a buoys where a bunch of sea lions
were sunning themselves. We Sally and I used to go sailing we would often sail
up the the buoy at Marina Del Rey so we could see the Sea Lions. Since they
hang out in the harbor they are used to boats going by and in general are unconcerned
if a boat approaches. We actually got so close that a number of Sea Lions decided
to leave the buoys, but most stayed on and we got a good view of them. Our trip
lasted almost exactly 3 hours. When we were done we drove into Long Beach and
found a nice Italian restaurant to have lunch. The meal was good and it was
the perfect end to a perfect day.