The Traveling Widower

Tag: humpback-whales

  • A trip to Moss Landing – Whale Snot and Otters

    photo of a sea otter in Elkhorn Slough

    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. 

    Photo of sea lions in feeding frenzy
    Sea Lion feeding frenzy

    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.

    Photo of the Moss Landing Power Plan stacks
    Stacks for the old 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.  

    Jan did all the paddling…I steered and took pictures

    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.

    Photo of an Elkhorn Slough 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.

  • Whales can fly! A trip to Moss Landing

    I can fly!!!

    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.

    Windy day at Moss Landing beach
    Sea Otter….always cute

    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.

    Mine is on the right

    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.

    Big splash about to happen

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

    Too close….

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

    Houston, we have liftoff
    Airborne!!!!
    Approaching landing (splashdown)

    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. 

    Heading down
    Tail Slap
    Risso’s Dolphins – they have blunt faces.

    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.