Monterey Without the Whales

As a whale-watching trip, it was a bust. We'd hoped to see humpbacks and blues when we booked this excursion. The day dawned foggy, and the naturalist said viewing conditions weren't good. If we didn't see whales, she said, they'd give us a rain-check for another trip, free. Or we could cancel before boarding.

Since we'd come all the way, and stayed overnight, we thought we'd do it anyway. I'm glad we went. As we sailed out past the boats, we saw a lot of sea lions. In fact, every floating buoy was topped with a sea-lion, enjoying the warmth and the safety from predators. The breakwater was covered in sea-lions and Brandt's cormorants.  Soon we were out of the harbor. The sky was gray, the sea was gray but quite calm, and sometimes it felt like being inside a pearl. A gray one, of course. The first sighting was Risso's dolphins, impressive gray animals around 10 feet long. The Latin name is Grampus Griseus, which I thought was lovely. There was a calf -- maybe several -- in the pod. They're littler than the adults, and a smooth gray. The adults are white with superficial scars, apparently because they scratch each other up with their teeth "in social interaction." (The squid they eat also fight back sometimes.) I'm fantasizing about a culture in which these dolphins deliberately acquire scars as a mark of experience and prowess. Sort of like tattoos...

A few bottle-nosed dolphins also came by. (These are the "Flipper" type dolphins we see in captivity.) The Rissos ignored or avoided the boat; the bottle-noses wanted to play in the bow wave and zoomed close to the boat. Though they were close, they were too fast for me to get photographs. (All the photos here are of Rissos.)

Harbor porpoises also swam around us, but didn't come close like the bottlenosed dolphins, or move as predictably as the Rissos, so I found them harder to watch.

And then there were the seabirds: Shearwaters and Brandt's cormorants, common murres in daddy and kid pairs, black-footed albatrosses, northern fulmars, elegant terns, and red-necked phalaropes.

The sea was dotted with egg-yolk jellies, which apparently attract leatherback turtles and mola sun-fish, but we saw neither species.

As we sailed back to the harbor, the sun came out and the sea shimmered with blue reflecting the sky. True to their word, they gave us a rain check, and no doubt we'll be back.