Sara
So Lindsay and I went on vacation to Oregon and we will whale watching and it was amazing.
Lindsay
Yeah. So we went to Depoe Bay, which is the whale watching capital of something. I don’t know. There was a lot of signs. Maybe Oregon, maybe northern Oregon, Oregon, but who knows. So because this harbor was man made, basically, like scooped everything out. So they could have a teeny tiny harbor of four docks, which are mostly whale watching now, because they do have a local group of gray whales who don’t migrate up to Alaska, they stay in Oregon all summer long.
Sara
Yeah. Yeah, their residents, sort of like through the summer.
Lindsay
They came, I think he said sometime in June this year, and will leave soon ish to go back to Mexico and do their thing. But the thing about that is that it’s very guaranteed whale watching and you are on a boat for about 10 minutes before you see a whale.
Sara
Yeah. So we went on a boat, there was six passengers and the driver, Captain/naturalist. It was like an open Zodiac. And because of like, you know, the instructions said to come half an hour early, and we didn’t know what we’re getting into. So as you know, the rule following Canadians that we are, we’re half an hour early, and everybody else was really too. So we literally had seen a whale before our tour was officially supposed to start.
Lindsay
Yeah, it was great.
Sara
And we we were I don’t know how far offshore Do you think we were at the most? Like 100 meters?
Lindsay Curtis
Yeah. From like the shore because the bay is actually inside. You have to go under a bridge that is the highway.
Sara
Yeah. So like 200 meters, like, yeah, so close.
Lindsay Curtis
Yeah, because there was a kelp area there and gray whales, especially these gray whales feed on mysids which live on kelp. So as opposed to the gray whale feeding that we see here, which makes me feel mad about gray whales, in my normal feelings about gray whales, because they’re just rolling around on the water, and going down and scooping stuff out from the sand to eat their little bivalve things. Yeah, these ones are actually in the kelp blowing bubbles to get the little krill/shrimpy guys off the kelp to gobble it up.
Sara
Yeah. Yeah. So basically, there was like a pretty cyclical feeding behavior like they would, you’d see a big bubble come up. And that would be the whale underwater, blowing a bubble to like, shake the mysids up, loosen them from the kelp. And then a couple minutes after that, they would do like three to six breaths like in pretty close succession right at the surface. And then they would do a dive, we saw a couple of flukes all backlit, so we didn’t get the pictures. But yeah, a couple of flukes, but not usually because I think it was pretty shallow.
Lindsay Curtis
And the fun part about that also is that they are kelping at the same time. So they were often covered in kelp. And there were times when they would be a little bit more enthusiastic with their breathing then we would expect and so they would come up and they would just be covered and kelp various sea monsters. And that’s always fun.
Lindsay
So we saw probably about five in the active part of the whalewatching. Maybe three at once in a kelp bed, it was hard to tell.
Sara
Yeah, I think we saw three at once and then sort of and we want we stayed with one for a while.
Lindsay
Her name was Marisa and yeah, say these names were given to the whales by the naturalists of Depoe Bay. The Oregon State University does have IDs for them. So they usually have, like this summer they had 40 of the resident animals come back and the naturalist like this guy has been doing it for a long time. And so he just knows them similar to well experienced naturalists anywhere in the world. You if you see those same whale. He also had been out already, because it’s such a short trip, ge’d also been out like five times that day already because it was like three o’clock. Yeah. So it’s like, yeah, Marissa is over here. Well, let’s go watch her.
Sara
We also saw, it was really cool. There was a whale that was further off out, like, deeper than the kelp beds. And yeah, we saw that one sort of out in the distance. And then one of the other boats realized that it was sleeping, which was cool. So it was really neat to get to see a whale. So just floating right on the surface, you know, everybody was giving it lots of space, because like, there should have half awake, but like, pretty dumb. So like, you wouldn’t wanna get too close, because they’re not that awake. And because this whale had a lot of barnacles. And also it seemed like, the boat driver said he had like a bit of a like skin condition, and basically was really light in color all the way along. So even when he was a couple feet under the surface, you can see pretty well, where he was. And yeah, so he would just kind of like float along, you know, a couple of very occasional pumps of his tail, like very half hearted. And then like gentle breaths, like way different than the feeding breasts are way, way, way softer.
Lindsay
And yes, he was also a much shorter Well, he’s probably shorter than, because he got close at one point, I think his length was comparable to our zodiac. Where as the feeding female was really big. Like a, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a whale. And it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a gray whale. But that was big.
Sara
Yeah, and because we saw them dive too – so we saw their whole body because like, sort of their rostrum area would kind of come up and then they would go down. And we would see them go on and on and on because there’s so long. She was so long. Especially Yeah. Yeah. So that was cool. His name that the naturalist had given was Lazy Bones, which was fitting his current behavior. Yeah. Yeah. And then we had like a, I don’t know, 10 or 15 minute drive back to the dock. And we saw even more blows on the way back.
Lindsay
Yeah. And then we got almost to the bridge harbor thing. And there was one really far in like past the kelp beds near the harbor, which was a little bit odd. But then it fluked.
Sara
Yeah. A plus.
Lindsay
And the it was great. But the Charter, the Whale Watch Company that we went out with was called whale’s tails.
Sara
Yeah, Whale’s Tail. Yeah. Yeah, and it seems like it was a pretty small operation like I think the boat driver and the person sort of in the office are like the only like, they’re the co owners. And that’s it. Yep. So yeah, very fun. Very chill. And yeah, seems like like the all the there was bigger boats. And there was some that seems like they maybe do like, seasonal or morning. Like Fishing Charters, and then they do well watching in the afternoon. Yeah, that’s always lots of lots of different boats. We were definitely the small boat out there, which was nice.
This post was adapted from a voice recording in episode 58 of the Whale Tales Podcast, listen here
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