At 08:59 AM 4/12/98 , Philip Wylie wrote: >I am curious to learn of what encounters have been experienced from >whale encounters where someone has had their kayak slammed, bumped >lifted, brushed out of the way or slapped by the tale of passing Orca >or other >whale species. I haven't had an encounter in a kayak, but I can pass on some discussion from Ed Gillet during my experience of whale watching in Laguna Ojos de Leibre (Scammon's Lagoon, Baja, outside of Guerrero Negro). The current wisdom is that whale encounters are more difficult with a kayak than a motor boat. Ours was a 22' panga with a 45 hp outboard. A pair of young females (they can be quite curious, can't they?) were spouting about a mile or away when we first saw them. The whales altered course and came over to inspect us. They gracefully froliced around the boat for about 15 minutes or so. This was entirely voluntary on the whales part; we weren't enticing them in any way. At one point, as one of the whales was passing slowly under the boat, she slowly rolled on to her side and looked up at me. Truly a moving experience! I guess that it breaks up a whale's day to go and visit a boat that has a bunch of arms and faces waving excitedly. The whales probably have some spare time on their hands, I don't know. Ed said that with kayaks, it's hard to catch up to the whales, and they don't really know what it is. Might be a predator! Especially if the whales have recently calved, this could be dangerous. Ed speculated that the underwater sound of the outboard allowed the whales to locate the boat, and come over to it, rather than vice versa. ________________________________________________________________ Doug Barnard Virtual Acreage Agoura, California (near L.A.) Visualization in 2D/3D/4D http://virtualacreage.com 818-991-9328 *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Sun Apr 12 1998 - 11:25:47 PDT
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