November 4: Call Me Ahab

About yesterday, I haven't been this depressed about an election since '92. Not only is it OK to lie, it's a sure winner to kill babies. For THIS I worked a 14-hour day? Blister Billy wins again, and we get what we deserve. I may come out of the gloom to talk about the actual day tomorrow, but today, it's about whales.

The only similarity between the 17th and yesterday was the early ringing of the alarm and my reaction: "Whose stupid idea was this, anyway?" We pulled out blearily about 5 and got to Fort Mason by 7:30, and soon enough along came Roni and her friend Judy. We had a little talk by our naturalist and hiked down to the Salty Lady.

Yawn!

The first whales we saw were a couple of humpbacks, and the captain kept telling me that I should move starboard ("downhill") and I kept telling him I could see just fine! This is probably the best fluke picture either of us got all day.

After we followed the two whales for awhile, we went out about three more miles and found ourselves in a pod of about 25 humpbacks, in a feeding frenzy. I saw the breaching, going so fast they left the water.

Roni saw this, a flipper waving, which is also feeding behavior. She didn't get a picture of "spy-hopping", lifting one's head and looking around.
Another unusual thing we both saw was a bluewhale showing its fluke (tail) as it went down.

A Humpback spout. Whew, it stinks! Old fish-breath.

Blue whale spouts are taller and straighter, something like a Yellowstone geyser. And the whale (all the light spots in the picture) was so BIG! We had about 6 Blue sightings, maybe 4 different individuals.

Rich had gone beachcombing and to the Microbe exhibit at the Golden Gate Academy of Sciences. He'd have been miserable, as was one girl who didn't even lift her head to see the whales. However, I did miss him. If he could have seen it without seasickness, he'd have loved it. He took a bit of a nap before we got back. I still say it was a great day.