The problem with choosing wildlife photography as a hobby, is that you invest a lot of $$$$ and time in the pursuit of perfection. For humpback photography, you are hoping for spectacular shots of whales flying through air, closeups of their eyes, or group photos of lunge feeding. My dream opportunity would be to photograph them underwater….I’m still working on that one. The problem with going out on most of the commercial tours in Monterey Bay, is that the vast majority of what you’ll see are whales spouting and diving, since they are primarily packing on blubber for their migration to Mexico in the fall. If you are lucky, as I was last April, you might catch them doing all the amazing things you really want to see – breaching, tail slapping, pectoral fin slapping, lunge feeding or coming up to the boat for people watching. That does happen quite a bit. The whales do like to have some fun. But the hit-or-miss opportunities here are one of the reasons why my wife and I started traveling to Maui each spring, to watch and photograph the whales while they are focused on mating rituals. Everywhere you turn in the waters off of Maui, there are whales flying through the air. Here in California, it’s pure luck.
On this particular trip, my luck ran out. There were large pods of whales, gorging on very large “bait balls” of anchovies. There were swarms of sea lions, following the whales as they all gorged on the anchovies.
The whales did not have to dive deep, so all you would see are the spouts as they surfaced in the midsts of the sealions, and then a fluke as they dove back down. That gets ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from most of the passengers, but not from semi-serious photographers Iike myself. All told, I probably shot about 25 photos. I usually have a few hundred when the whales are performing ( I can set the camera for 10 frames per second).
It was a pleasant afternoon, and definitely a nice distraction to focus on something other than my 50th anniversary. It’s always nice to be out on Monterey Bay on a beautiful sunny day. But a disappointment in terms of photography expectations. I still had high hopes for the next day, which was a pontoon boat tour of Elkhorn Slough. An “Otter Safari”.
A bit of background if you’ve never heard of Moss Landing or the Elkhorn Slough (pronounced ‘slew’). Moss Landing is a fishing community (I use that term loosely) in between Santa Cruz and Monterey. The harbor is fair sized, filled with lots of commercial and private boats, as well as some large research vessels. The Monterey Aquarium has a research center there. All for a good reason – the harbor entry happens to be at the head of the Monterey Canyon, an underwater version of the Grand Canyon which is a giant smorgasbord of seafood for large marine mammals…like Humpback Whales. Along with a lot of sea lions, killer whales and many kinds of fish, so the harbor is home to a number of eco touring outfits. The harbor is also the entry for a very large marine estuary – the Elkhorn Slough, which is home to a variety of interesting birds, a sheltered resting place for harbor seals, and a feeding ground for sea otters. The slough is protected, accessible only by kayaks and a couple of licensed eco tours, which take groups out in open air, pontoon boats. Nice and comfy. The main channel goes quite a ways inland, surrounded mostly by farm land. And dominated by the giant stacks from a now defunct power plant.
My wife and I once rented a kayak there and did some exploring up the slough – absolutely beautiful and peaceful. Easy paddling unless a strong tide is coming in or out. There is also a nice protected area by the harbor entry, where the otters used to rest in large clusters (called a raft) – we always made a point of stopping there just to watch the critters rolling around.
We never considered booking one of the pontoon boat “safari” rides – they just seemed so touristy. I had been planning on renting a kayak to photograph the otters, but was concerned about handling my big camera while I’m paddling around – way too risky. And then a friend told me that the pontoon tours were worth taking – no paddling required, and you have a nice stable platform to take pictures. Sold.
This was quite a different experience from the whale watch tour I did the day before. The boat holds about 24 people, plus the boat driver and a naturalist. You just sort of step onto the boat, grab a seat on one of the benches, and they take off through the harbor. It’s very informal – the driver and naturalist keep a dialog going throughout the tour, pointing things out, answering questions. You can move around on the boat which was great for photography – unlike the whale tours, you don’t have people camped out along the railings, blocking the view. There were only 8 passengers so there was plenty of room to move around. I was also able to finally use the fancy monopod I bought a few months ago – there’s too much vibration on the larger whale tour boats, but it was perfect for stabilizing the big lense on the pontoon boat.
It was nice taking a slow ride through the harbor – there is lots to see with sea lions camped out on the piers (any any boat they can climb onto), and a good sized colony of cormorants nesting on the old pilings and channel markers.
Once we turned into the slough, the driver just wandered back and forth along the main channel, slowing down when we saw anything of interest, which was pretty much all the time. There was an abundance of birds including squadrons of pelicans flying just overhead – not being a birder, I do not recall the names of all the other ones the naturalist spotted. There were harbor seals resting on the shore and best of all….lots of otters. A few photo’s below:
BTW – if you click on any of the photo’s, you’ll get a full frame expansion. The mother with a very large pup is my favorite.
The tour was relatively short – only about 90 minutes, but it was well worth it. I finally got to try out the monopod (no hand cramps this time), and learned a few lessons about using the new camera with fast moving, wet objects. Otters are really difficult to get the correct exposure – for one thing, they move around a lot, their fur is shiny when wet, and you wind up with photographs of a mess of wet fur, whiskers and the big webbed paws and feet since they do not hold still too often. I also forgot to reset some of the settings I used for the whale tour. But I still managed a couple of good photos and most important of all, I had fun.
Here are a couple of links if you are interested in going to Moss Landing for either whale tours or the slough tour:
My personal favorite for whale tours: https://www.blueoceanwhalewatch.com/
Elkhorn Slough tour: https://elkhornslough.com/
General Information: https://elkhornslough.org/
You can also hike around on some trails and boardwalks, but these all start at the research center, which is only open from Wednesday-Sunday. Darn. Maybe next time.
The Traveling Widower 