“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee.”
These are the words of Herman Melville that should have been coming out of my mouth to fully appreciate the moment: driving towards whale spouts in the distant horizon with the boat’s steering wheel in my hand the ocean spray in my face.
Finding ourselves a mile offshore west of the Scripps Pier after a long day of shark fishing, we waited. A 30 foot radius of calm unrippled water surrounded our 17 foot boat; the “footprint” left by a large aquatic mammal that had just dove from the surface.
And then- we saw it. A couple hundred feet from us was a small blue island skating the surface, only recognizable by the small dorsal fin. A BLUE WHALE. The largest creature living or has ever lived on planet earth. They can grow up to 100 feet long. And we were surrounded.
No words can describe how immensely exhilarating and frightening is the sudden spray from the blue whale’s blowhole every time it reaches the surface. Half a dozen surrounded our boat; at one point there was not ten seconds between each spray that would hit our faces like a fresh foggy mist.
We bobbed in the water for another half an hour like rubber duckies in a bath tab. Miniscule and unimpressive. A bath toy to the ocean’s true dwelling giants. I steered the boat back to SIO with the sunset behind beckoning me to come back and witness these amazing creatures once again.
