Whales can fly! A trip to Moss Landing

I have to include a little of the sad stuff here, since it relates directly to the loss of my wife. April 27th was the first year mark for her passing and as expected, I was an emotional wreck on the days leading up to that day. I had been stressing out for some time on what to do – have a celebration of life party, try and ignore what happened, or do shots of vodka all day. None of those worked for me. Eventually, I came up with a good alternative to an all day drinking binge – go somewhere that we both loved. Since I had just been to the coast, I was reminded of something we did all the time – whale watching tours, out of Moss Landing. Jan loved being out on the ocean, and watching Humpbacks was something we did in Monterrey Bay and Hawaii. So, I booked an afternoon cruise, planning to stay at a really nice hotel close by afterwards.

My plans changed the day I was set to head out for the afternoon tour – there was a storm way off the coast, and Blue Ocean (tour company) had to cancel the cruise due to high waves in the bay. Not a problem – I rescheduled for the following morning since I would be staying close by at a hotel that evening. I drove out to Moss Landing anyway to look for otters, and just hang out on the beach for a while. It was really windy and cold and would have been awful out in the bay.

My plans for that evening were pretty simple – dinner at the hotel bar, and a martini toast for my wife. I asked the bartender for my usual dry vodka martini, and to make a lightly dirty martini, my wife’s favorite, which I’d keep to the side. When I explained why, she had everyone at the bar toast to my wife’s memory. Nice. Made me cry a bit. I wound up talking to a lot of folks at the bar, and to the bartender for a few hours – turned into a nice celebration of sorts.

OK – enough sad stuff. I had to checkout and hit the road early for the cruise – it was only a 20 minute drive from the hotel to Moss Landing, but you never know with traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway. It was a bit foggy at first, but the sun was already out and the skies cleared when I reached the Moss Landing Harbor, so it looked like it would be a beautiful day. I like going with this outfit – a nice boat, with small groups, and a great naturalist and crew. I headed straight for the bow when I boarded, and found a good spot where I could brace against the railing – I was using the, heavy 500mm lens, so this was going to be a good experiment to see how it handles (by hand) on a boat. A family moved to bow in front of me, but they were all short….perfect. 

There always seems to be something interesting to see in the harbor – sealions are always there, and sometime otters are hanging around. Here’s a pile of sealions

Moss Landing is in a great spot for whale cruises – the deep Monterrey Canyon actually starts at the mouth of the harbor, so there are usually whales right outside of the harbor mouth. And true to form, we had spouts as soon as we left the harbor. Not only spouts, but active whales – tail slapping and breaching. Seeing a whale elevate almost completely out of the water is an amazing sight – the whales weight up to 45 or 50 tons, and they can get almost completely airborne with a couple of swings of their big tails (flukes). Getting shots of a breaching whale requires a great deal of luck – you have to be focusing near that spot when they begin to surface, have really good autofocus, and a fast shutter speed. And steady hands. I’ve been lucky in the past in Maui, but never really got anything worth showing here in Monterrey. My luck finally changed – and the new lens helped a lot. I missed out on a couple of breaches, one right next to the boat (I sort of got that) but the lighting was off.

And then one breached too close, and I was not pointing in the right direction

But then fortune smiled upon me, and I was pointing in the right place when a big one went airborne:

The third one in sequence would have been perfect except for missing a tip of the fluke. Darn. But I was thrilled with the other two. We spotted a large group of dolphins and followed them for a while, and humpbacks were spouting and diving all over the place. After 3 hours or so, we finally headed back to the harbor. My hand was cramping by then from holding the heavy camera. 

I kind of like this long distance shot of a breaching whale – nice colors.

This turned into a really nice trip for me – it’s not like I ran away from the awful memory of that day a year ago. My wife was on my mind the entire time. She is always a part of me and always with me in my mind and heart. But I was able to enjoy a few hours where I was focused on something so beautiful and amazing, that we both enjoyed together.