The shape had hardly time to register in my mind.
When it did it was halfway into the water, and the MASSIVE splash seemed huge even from a half-mile away. It was a humpback, by our best guess… bubble net feeding, circling around the plankton that makes this massive mammal’s food, and making a net of bubbles before diving down and shooting up into the center of the undisturbed water and eating tens of thousands of the tiny animals that sustain the world’s largest animal.
A moment later we felt that thump of the literal tons of whales landing. We were in the middle of nowhere and we were the only humans to see this.
A pair of pilot whales also showed up for a visit. Can you hear them?
Humpbacks!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zEJEnB7bWo
Over the next few days whales continued to surface around us, too quickly and too infrequently to take pictures and not with the same kind of drama. Then one appeared just fifty feet away. It was close enough to stop rowing and pull out the camera. Pat asked me if I saw it. I replied, “no, just two dorados swimming… wait… that’s a whale and those are its flippers!” It was just under the boat. By this time Markus was up and I put on the leash and goggles and dove in. There was lots of phytoplankton on the surface, and looking up it created a strange ceiling. I saw it, swimming away, huge and just at the surface. It swam away!
I held myself under the bottom of the boat, hoping for more. Left…. right… bow…. stern…. below! One hundred fifty feet – the whole whale filled my vision. It moved so slow, and yet its locomotion so powerful and quick. Beneath its massive body was the abyss, and all of it made me feel small.