Humpback Whales 5/17/25 Monterey
My friends Chris and Tony and I were scheduled for a whale watching charter yesterday. On our way down we got a message from the captain saying the trip was canceled due to weather. We figured we were already more than half way there so we thought we'd keep going and see if we could see anything from shore. We tried Lover's Point first and we did see a few spouts but they were far off. I also saw some dolphins, I think they were Risso's but I need to take a closer look at my shots to confirm. I got a pile of otter shots and pelican shots.
We decided to start heading back up the coast with a few stops. We first stopped at Moss Landing and were able to see 3 whales from the Jetty. That's where all of these shots were taken. It looked to me like 2 were a mother/calf pair. The thrid one looked like it was probably a juvenile.
Then we tried Pigeon Point lighthouse, but no luck there. We headed further up and saw some kite surfers and stopped to take a few photos, and then just motored on home.
While it's a little hard to be too upset on a day when you get to see whales, I was pretty frustrated with myself (and a bit with the whales who toyed with me). When we saw the whales, I decided to start heading out on the rock jetty, something Chris and Tony opted out of. When I got to the end of the jetty, I was in a relatively good spot, but shortly after I got there the whales decided to head further out. I really should have spent more time earlier getting shots before venturing further out (I failed to follow my own guideline "first get something, then try to get something better"). The whales came back a little closer after that and started tail slapping like crazy, and I snapped away thinking I was getting some pretty nice shots, only to realize later I had managed to bump my shutter speed up to 1/8000 by accident, introducing a lot more noise in the shots.
Just after I realized that had happened, and fixed it, the whales left again. I waited for a bit, somewhat dejected, but hopeful they'd come back. After a bit I looked back at the shore and noticed Tony was gone and Chris was looking a bit bored, so I started walking back. I made it almost all the way back to shore when I saw Chris pick up his camera again and start shooting. I turned around to see the whales had come back close(r) again. Instead of doing the smart thing and start shooting where I was, I raced back out to the end of the jetty. And of course, by the time I got there they started heading out again.
Sigh. Oh well, it was still a beautiful day and it's always awesome when you get to see whales.
Note that I did a did a Happywhale “fast ID” on a few of the fluke shots (all from the same whale), but it didn’t come up with any matches. I thought the resolution should be good enough to get an ID. It’s possible it’s just not in their database. I’ll try a standard submission and see if they can either ID it or confirm it’s a new whale to add.
