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Entertainment
California Weekend Getaway:
Majestic creatures within reach
Now’s the time: Whale-watching season off the California coast runs from December through March.
By CARY ORDWAY
There is something magical about viewing sea creatures in their native habitat, and maybe one of the best examples is the opportunity to watch gray whales off the California coast. Just as predictable as Pasadena’s Rose Parade, a “parade” of some 20,000 gray whales is ready for viewing each winter in waters easily reached by tour boats.
Some may have the impression that these huge mammals only travel in deep waters far from the coastline, but the reality is it’s even possible to see whale spouts from some points on land. In the San Diego area, where we spent an afternoon whale watching from a boat, the whales are just five or so miles off the coastline.
The big question for us was whether our trip would indeed yield any whale sightings. The website for San Diego Harbor Excursion has a guarantee that, if you don’t see whales, you can come back for a free trip. But that still meant there was the possibility we wouldn’t see whales and that would be disappointing.
The second question was whether we would get seasick. The public relations people at the boat company made a point of warning us to take seasickness medication ahead of time if we thought we’d need it. We haven’t been seasick since we made the mistake of staying down below deck on a cruise through Pearl Harbor several decades ago. Since then, we’d weathered hurricanes on cruise ships and sailed boats through the San Juan Islands without any recurrence…but still, we had to wonder about that strong admonition. Was this going to be particularly rough?
The great thing about whale-watching out of San Diego is that you leave from the San Diego waterfront. If you take an afternoon whale-watching cruise, that leaves the morning to do things like visit the USS Midway Museum or tour a Russian submarine, or see the sailing ship from Master and Commander. It’s also fun to grab a burger and beer at the Beach Bay Café where, coincidentally, we boarded our whale-watching tour.
We showed up about a half-hour early for our 1:30 p.m. departure to ensure good seats on the railing of the outside decks. The 100-foot Marietta offers plenty of outdoor seating, enough, it seemed, to accommodate almost everyone on the cruise. In a pre-cruise briefing passengers were advised not to linger in the restroom, where some people apparently tend to go if they’re feeling queasy, because that will only cause more motion sickness. Then the captain offered that the morning cruise had, in fact, spotted several whales. That was the good news. The bad news was that there were four- to seven-foot swells, big enough to make some people sick.
Heading out through San Diego Harbor, a naturalist from the Birch Aquarium took the microphone and began a three-hour narration that was packed full of information. We had expected many details on the whales but also included were sightseeing tips about the harbor area and San Diego in general.
For example, we learned that the U.S. Navy has 30 sea lions and 80 dolphins that have been trained to help guard Navy vessels and operating areas. We had never heard of John Wayne Jetty, which stretches out from the harbor into the sea, and which got its name because Wayne hit the barrier twice with his boat in two separate years when the barrier was obscured by high tide. And did you know that Cabrillo National Monument is the second most visited National Monument in the country? Only the Statue of Liberty sees more visitors.
The naturalist’s expertise, of course, is sea life and we learned that San Diego Bay is home to the largest seahorses in the world, 12 inches long, and also to giant green sea turtles weighing 350 pounds. And we found out there are more than 4,000 pairs of the once-endangered brown pelicans in the San Diego area, birds with a wingspan of up to 84 inches and a height of four feet.
Then it was on to a discussion about the gray whales that, between November and May, migrate 10,000 miles from their summer feeding grounds in frigid artic waters to the warm lagoons of Mexico. In November and December, they’re on their way south; the return begins in early February with the whale-watching season in San Diego ending about the end of March. San Diego, in fact, was home to the very first whale-watching tours which commenced in 1955.
After leaving the harbor, our boat began some moderate rolling in the increasingly larger swells, but we were pleasantly surprised that the Marietta seemed to handle the water just fine. We looked for any reaction from our fellow passengers, but everyone seemed to be enjoying the sunny weather with little care about the swells.
At this point everyone on the boat went on alert: It was time to keep an eye out for whale spouts. Our naturalist explained that the whales come to the surface, emerging from the waves, then diving under the waves, then re-emerging a few times and then disappearing for three to five minutes before coming up again. Sometimes they stay down for as long as 20 minutes.
We wondered who was going to yell “Thar she blows!” upon the first sighting. And then it came. Our naturalist said the captain had spotted a whale spout at “12 o’clock” — meaning straight ahead of the boat. Passengers moved forward to get a look and, sure enough, there it was in the distance: a spout that, on land, might be confused with the Old Faithful geyser.
Soon, nearby boats were joining us as we moved closer to get a view of the giant mammal breaching the water, then slicing its way through the waves with its barnacle-covered back clearly visible to the elated passengers. Once the whale had been underwater several minutes, our boat moved on and quickly spotted more spouts on both sides of the boat. There were spouts at “10 o’clock” then “2 o’clock” and on it went to the point that the naturalist admitted there were more whales visible on this day than most. For more information on San Diego whale-watching, please visit www.sdhe.com or phone (619) 234-4111.For more information on travel in California, please visit www.californiaweekend.com.
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