[Paddlewise] Warning very very long gray whale post

What follows are the drafts of articles or parts of articles I sent in to
Sea Kayaker Magazine. Warning: these are the long winded unedited versions
before Bea Dowd skillfully edited them. Of all the articles I did, this was
the most fun to research and write. Unfortunately, or fortunately as the
case may be, it didn't make it into "Deep Trouble". (Note: Sea kayaker had 5
or 6 subscriptions cancelled as a result of the 1st article--and I sure hope
the statue of limitations has now run out on any whale harassment charges--I
didn't mean to scare the whale, honest!)


THE GRAY WHALE: FRIENDLY GIANT OR DEVIL-FISH?  (became article in Sea
Kayaker's Fall 1985 issue)

Last autumn friends and I were paddling back from Cape Flattery (the
Northwest tip of Washington) to Makah Bay.  One of us noticed a plume spray
into the air well over a mile ahead.  We watched it reoccur a few times and
saw that it didn't stay in the same place.  Oh boy, a whale!  The heart
shaped plume from two nostrils rather than one marked it as a baleen rather
than a toothed whale.   Because it was traveling close to shore we guessed
it was most likely a gray whale.  We judged the whales course and maneuvered
to be in front of it so we might have a chance for a good picture.  Fifty
yards away it broke the surface just enough for us to see its barnacled head
and broad gray back.  Before we had time to snap a picture it was gone.  The
whale appeared to be moving at a fast paddling speed.  Hoping for a picture
the next time the whale surfaced I turned and raced off in the direction it
was going.  The whale stayed down for a long time and when it finally
surfaced it was far off to one side.  All I have to show for my effort is a
blurred picture of a distant spout taken from the hip.
Strangely, I wasn't nervous about being directly in front of 30 tons of
whale.  I figured whales could tell what was in front of them and didn't
want to bump themselves.  They have sonar, Right?  Besides whales are
friendly.  Aren't they?
In the last issue of Sea Kayaker I reviewed the close calls as well as the
fatal incidents that befell sea kayakers in the last several years.  All
involved cold water as the major danger except the one involving a gray
whale in a Baja lagoon.  I considered that one to be a fluke accident.  As
Art Hohl told the story, in the first issue of Sea Kayaker, it appears his
kayak may have been a toy for a playful six ton calf.  I dismissed it as not
being very relevant to the issue of kayak safety.  I mean, if you're going
to get close enough to pet the friendly gray whales they might accidentally
hurt you just by moving too quickly even if they are trying to be careful.
Right?  The following letter from Bill Almand started to crumble my
Pollyanna ideas about whales. Although, on first hearing about Bill's
letter, when John Dowd suggested I write this article around it, I suspected
that it could be a hoax.  That possibility would allow me to maintain my
faith in the friendliness of whales.  No such luck!

The letter from Bill Almand:

“It was Sunday, January 27, 1985, at approximately 11 45 am, I had been out
off Point Pinos in Monterey Bay for most of the morning looking for gray
whales. I had seen four or five and had a good paddle getting the feel of
the Icefloe. Since this is my first time whale watching. I felt good to have
come within 20 ft. from one. I called it a day and started to paddle in to
the bay.

I felt good. the boat handled well and my muscles were warm and relaxed, so
I started getting into a good steady paddle rhythm. All of a sudden, I was
bumped as if a boat had hit me from behind, but there were no boats near me.
It pushed me forward, picking up my speed from three to four knots to eight
to ten. I stuck my paddle in the stern rudder position on my left side
because my bow was being turned right by the push. Surprised, I Jerked my
head around to my right, just in time to see a huge spotted back and tail
slide under the water only inches off my right stern. I let out an excited
yell feeling very happy and thrilled about being nudged by a whale. I
started to paddle again, thinking that I couldn’t ask for a more exciting
day and that my wife and kids and friends will hardly believe this. About
three or four more strokes and BLAM! I was hit very hard, like a car had
just rammed me from the left side. I remember a feeling of limbo for a
second (later, witnesses said I was in the air), and then a jar, and I was
looking at a giant back sliding up out of the water and my boat starting to
twist sideways and lean to the left I was still in my cockpit, but both the
kayak and I were slipping and slowly being turned over because we were on
the whales back right on top, and completely out of the water! There is no
way I’m going to be able to keep this thing upright this time,” I remember
thinking. The bow had turned 90 degrees now so that the boat was pointed
lengthwise down the whales back. I tried to brace anyway, using its back,
but by now I was sliding off its side. I tried to roll but the weight of me,
and my kayak on top, and the whale beneath, was too much for the paddle and
it snapped in half. I twisted my torso and suddenly there I was, my chest
and the left side of my face sliding on the whales back. It felt like soft,
slippery rubber With my hands spread out wide, I tried to get some kind of
stability. I was still in the cockpit~ with the kayak on top of me now. I
remember looking at my right hand and seeing the barnacles being knocked off
the whale as it slid under me forwards, and I slid off it sideways — kayak
and all.

Then came the water. When I went into it I was upside down, still in the
cockpit, but without a paddle. As I hit, it felt as if I was going to pass
out, as if someone had hit me a good shot in the head. I told myself. “Don’t
go out, don’t go out”, and then, like a streak of lightning, came the
thought, “THE TAIL”!

I could feel the immense presence next to me and the rush of water it
created as it moved. I wondered then if this was it for me but at the same
time knew I had to push away from it and try to get as far as I possibly
could before the tail came.

I felt a heavy force pushing me deeper. I started to roll out of my cockpit
thinking I had to get away from the boat. As I put my feet on the seat and
shoved with my legs, I pushed off the side of the whale with my hands. It
was still like a washing machine — bubbles, and no orientation at all — then
I felt myself slowly floating up.
When my head broke surface, it was as if I had just failed to complete a
roll. No whale in sight, the water calm and glassy around me. Then I got
real scared: where was the whale, where was it going to come from and what
the hell could I do against it? The kayak was floating about 15 ft away but
it seemed like 100. I swam for it thinking the whale was going to slam into
me again as soon as I reached it. Trying to control my mind from panic, I
reached inside the cockpit behind the seat and pulled out my flare gun case.
Trying not to think of the whale, I got the flare gun, put in a shell and
snapped it shut. I cocked the hammer as I raised my arm and pulled the
trigger. The trail of smoke and red star looked beautiful to me but I knew I
wasn’t safe, and the fear of the whale was still very much with me. Then I
saw the white hull of a small motorboat coming in towards me. I raised my
arm and yelled for help.

They came in and motioned me over, but I was afraid to leave the kayak and
swim the small distance thinking the whale would slam me again.

“Help me!” I yelled again and the operator came on into the calm spot. I
climbed aboard but held on to the toggle on the bow — I couldn’t leave the
kayak there. Then I saw the whale’s tail slap the water behind me and it
went under again to come up on the other side, slapping its tail again and
again. The water was calm around us and I didn’t like it. “Get the hell out
of here” I said, “I don’t like the feeling I have”.

The boat took off with me hanging on to the front toggle of the kayak. But
after a short distance its wake flooded the cockpit washing out my flare
gun. We stopped to empty my kayak and slid it onto his boat. We waited
awhile until we saw no sign of the whale, then went back in and picked up
the left half of the broken paddle and the flare gun case. I never saw the
right half again.

The kayak was cracked very badly in front of the cockpit and there were
stress fractures on the bottom of the hull. After the incident, Bob Swanson,
owner of the kayak, was very nice in saying, “Fortunes of war,” when I told
him of the damage!


As I researched this article looking for explanations for these incidents it
became obvious that I had been pretty naive in my estimation of the dangers
due to whales.  Knowing a little bit about the behavior of killer whales and
over generalizing that knowledge to encompass whales that are about as
distantly related as two whales can be was only one of my errors.  According
to some authorities Baleen whales don't even use echo-location.  I had
assumed all whales used sonar.

Killer whales have gone from being fearsome man-eaters in the publics mind
to friendly and intelligent beings that do tricks on command and even let
people ride on their backs.  Although we couldn't convince a sea lion of it,
the modern impression of killer whales as no threat to man appears to be
well justified.  The only documented case of a wound due to the bite by a
killer whale was to the leg of a surfer among a herd of sea lions.  Since
sea lions are a common meal for killer whales this was probably a case of
mistaken identity rapidly spat out after one bite.  As we changed our
perceptions of killer whales following the capture of Namu, in 1965, all
whales have probably appeared to be more friendly to us.  We lost our fear.
Some boaters have even come alongside and petting gray whales.  Now some
gray whales approach boats and seem to encourage being petted.  This
phenomena began with a single cow in one of the Baja lagoons but the
behavior has spread to many other gray whales.  Boaters and whale watchers
have recently been reporting similar approaches in many areas along the gray
whale's coastal migration path.  It was labeled the "friendly whale
syndrome" by one researcher I called.  Could this be how Bill Almands
adventure began?  Was this why the calf was approaching Art Hohl?  Or was it
escaping shallow water or returning to its mother's side?

As I heard about the gray whale incident in Baja from more and more second
and third hand sources I began to wonder if there weren't more than one such
incident.  The stories often seemed so different.  Some said it was to a
double kayak others said only one person was involved.  (It was Art Hohl by
himself in a double kayak.)  Some said it was a mother protecting her calf
and others said it was just a calf.  The confusion was explained when I
talked to the victim himself and to Bruce Freeman who watched the whole
incident from a nearby kayak.  Art saw only the calf and is convinced that
all the damage was caused by the calf.  Bruce on the other hand says he
watched the calf come right next to Art's kayak when a large snout came up
vertically and tipped Art over.  The large whale (presumably the mother)
then turned and hit the kayak with its flukes.  Bruce says that then both
mother and baby began tail lobbing the surface nearby before rapidly
swimming off down the channel at the surface.  A motor skiff with a film
crew from the BBC and some whale researchers were also watching the same
whales, they said the whales had been making quite a commotion before Art
came into the picture         .  Art felt he was not between the mother and
calf.  However, I would guess that a large moving object right above or
right next to her calf could easily be taken by the mother as a threat to
it.  Put yourself in the mother whale's position.  Why take a chance, a poke
with the snout and a few lobs of the tail will chase it away whatever it is.

Bruce says that even before the incident there had been some speculation
that whale calves may be attracted to yellow kayaks.  The day before Art's
encounter another yellow kayak on the tour was brushed lightly by a baby
gray whale.  Art Hohl and Bill Almand were both using yellow over white
kayaks.  I have been unable to determine if any whales or dolphins are known
to have color vision.  However, since most mammals do not have full color
vision and keen eyesight is not an essential sense for whales I would wager
that they don't have color vision.  Even if they don't have color vision, it
is still possible that the way they see the color yellow has some
significance for them.  Whatever the reasons, this dangerous behavior on the
part of gray whales is not limited to kayaks, yellow boats, or even this
century.

Less than one month after Art Hohl's experience (Jan. 1983) a skiff with ten
people aboard was in Scammon's Lagoon watching  a baby gray whale that was
leaping into the air nearby when it was hit from beneath and thrown into the
air by a large whale.  When the skiff came back down on the water the whale
swatted it with its tail flukes.  Four people were injured and one other 60
year old man who had been onboard died the same evening of a heart attack.
One of the injured died a week later in the hospital of head injuries he
suffered during the attack.

The gray whale gained a fearsome reputation among whalers in the midst of
the last century.  They called it, among other things, "devil-fish" because
it was one of the few whale species that would deliberately attack its
tormenters.  Another name was "hard-head” for its habit of coming up under
whaleboats and rooting them over with its snout, “in the same manner that
hogs upset their empty trough,” as Captain Scammon described it. Scammon was
a naturalist and a whaler, and the first captain to discover the whale
birthing lagoon that now bears his name. Concerning whaling in the lagoons
he wrote: “in the case of the wounding of a calf the parent animal in her
frenzy will chase the boats and overturn them with her head or dash them to
pieces  with her ponderous flukes."

Scammon labeled gray whales as the most dangerous of all whales to pursue.
On first entering Scammon's Lagoon the whalers were overwhelmed by the sight
of whales so numerous that they would be hard put to cross the water in a
whaleboat at the remote extremities of the lagoon without coming into
contact with one.  The first day of whaling Scammon's Lagoon resulted in the
taking of two large cows without difficulty.  The next day the whaleboats
were launched at dawn.  Soon one boat was smashed by the flukes of one whale
it was pursuing but had not yet harpooned.  Many aboard were injured
seriously.  A second whaleboat engaged in rescuing the injured men was also
clobbered by another passing whale.  Both boats were complete wrecks.  For
several days no whaling was attempted as half the crew was injured and most
of the rest were demoralized by fright.  Several days later another attempt
was made to reap this bonanza, but when the crew in a whaleboat came near a
whale to be harpooned most of them jumped out of the boat for fear of the
flukes.  Unfortunately, for the whales, human ingenuity succeeded in
changing the method of whaling in the lagoons to a far safer system using
bomb-lances fired from the shallows where the whale couldn't reach them.
They used this in the lagoons instead of the usual harpoon and line method.
They had to wait a day or two for the dead whales to float to the surface
with this method but it proved far safer.  Within a few years of the
discovery of Scammon's lagoon the California Gray whales were nearly
extinct.

It seams clear that gray whales will fight back if they feel they or their
young are threatened.  Furthermore, they have no good reason not to act as
though a threat to the young is present on the slightest evidence or
provocation.  Bruce Freeman's advice for whale watching in the lagoons is to
watch from shore or  if
kayaking, to stay in shallow water when gray whales are near. he says the
best viewing is often to be had looking down from a small hill: it is easier
to see into the water from a high angle.

Why was Bill Almands kayak attacked? It could be that a calf was involved,
but a gray whale in Monterey Bay, in January, would not likely have a
newborn along. Since gestation in gray whales takes thirteen months, gray
whales would be more likely to be mating than giving birth in those
particular waters. Mating? Could Bill’s kayak have been mistaken for a lady
whale? Surely grays are smarter than that: I have just read of a captive
baby gray whale that could recognize, from a great distance away, the
approach of its favorite trainer. But before we completely dismiss this
possibility, let me relate an experience described to me by Bruce Hedrick,
whose 40-foot, 12-ton Valiant Sailboat was sexually molested by a humpback
whale. The humpback would bang the sailboat hard from behind, come
alongside, roll on its side and grasp the boat with his long pectoral fins.
With each of these repeated passes, the sailboat got turned around 180
degrees. Incredibly, this went on for 18 hours. How did Bruce and his crew
know of the whale’s intentions? Would you believe six and one-half feet long
and five inches in diameter at the base?
Maybe we should ask the question again: how could an animal as intelligent
as a whale mistake a fiberglass boat for a mate? Was he nearly blind? Was it
an especially whale-like sailboat hull, its fin keel and rudder (flukes)
reminiscent of a female humpback on her side? It is possible there was no
mistake. The average male of another supposedly intelligent species has been
known to become aroused by such unlikely mates as inflated rubber dolls and
two-dimensional representations of females complete with a fold and staple
through the navel. The not-so-average ones have been known to become aroused
from far stranger cues. There is a certain natural logic to all this: sperm
is cheap, better to waste some than possibly miss an opportunity to
reproduce. A behavioral command of the sort I’m about to suggest may well be
genetically ingrained in males of the whale species: If it is pointed at
each end, rounded in the middle, and moves along slowly at the surface, try
to mate with it.

Another possibility may be that Bill’s kayak was perceived by the whale as a
young one to nurse, or even as a marauding shark. I have already mentioned
the friendly whale syndrome this was first noted several years ago, when one
gray cow learned to come alongside tourists skiffs for “petting” (or was it
for parasite removal?) For a number of years she was alone in this
attention-getting quest, but lately the behavior has spread to many other
grays. There are reports of them rubbing against boats off Baja as well as
several areas along the gray whale’s migration route.

Maybe the whale that approached Bill Almand’s kayak originally approached it
to mate or be petted. After the first push (for whatever reason), the whale’
s response became typical attack behavior. What could have provoked it? Did
Bill poke the whale hard with his paddle when trying to brace? Did the sharp
cornered keel on the stern of his boat stab the friendly whale in a
sensitive place? Was Bill’s kayak mistaken for a shark? Large sharks appear
to prey on their young, and I have heard that baleen whales will attack
sharks by ramming them in the side with their snouts. I am sure Sea Kayaker
readers will come up with many more possible explanations. I hope so,
because, on the whole, this article seems to have supplied far more
questions than answers!

On the basis of these few incidents, I wouldn’t want to say that gray whales
are a serious threat to kayakers. However, I am not going to deliberately
place myself in the path of, chase, or closely approach a devil-fish again.


GRAY WHALE UPDATE (Summer 1986 Sea Kayaker)

Since my column on the gray whales in the fall 1985 issue (Sea Kayaker vol.2
#2) there have been two more kayaks reported damaged by them.  Also last
winter there were several skiffs and even one larger motor powered tour boat
overturned by gray whales.  My informant was the leader on the trip in which
the two kayaks were damaged.  A regular visitor to the lagoons of Baja for
the last 8 or 9 years he had come to know the gray whales as friendly giants
that in many instances appeared to be being very careful not to give a kayak
a hard bump.  Only occasionally has he witnessed any aggressive or
protective behavior on the part of the whales.  During those few times it
seamed a warning and when the kayakers backed off a little the whales calmed
down.  It seemed to him that this aggressiveness also only occurred in late
February when the calves were no longer staying so close to their mother's
side but starting to explore on their own.  The apparent aggressive display
was the mother swimming around at the surface making a lot of waves and
commotion.  During the first week of the trip all was calm and peaceful.

This was the first year a motor powered tourist boat was allowed in
Scammon's Lagoon.  On Sunday, February 16, 1986, The government tourist boat
was overturned by a whale.  I don't have the details of the accident, but,
according to my informant the whales observed for the next several days
seemed to be acting strange and nervous.  They would disappear at the first
sign of a boat or kayak when in the past they could be easily approached
even while nursing.

Monday the 17th was calm--a good day to observe whales.  The kayakers
paddled several miles across the shallows to the deeper channels where
whales are to be found.  They could see about forty whales ahead.   They
stopped and to their surprise a whale slowly surfaced right under one of the
fiberglass doubles.  When it bumped the yellow and white kayak Eddyline
WT560 it suddenly took of as though it had been surprised.  Its tail flukes
hit the double kayak just in front of the front footbraces and broke out a
large piece, shattered a larger area and punctured the float bag.  The kayak
started to sink at one end and was abandoned by its occupants.  Strangely
when they looked around not one of the forty whales that they had been
observing were now visible.  The paddlers were not hurt and were carried
back to shore on other kayaks.  The damaged kayak was towed in as well.

Since this was the first time anything like this had happened to him in the
eight years of exploring the lagoons during the whale season, (and it
appeared to be a random accident at that) the leader decided it would be all
right to go out again the next day.  They paddled about three miles from
shore in a different direction on Tuesday.  They came upon a mother nursing
her calf.  Still nervous from the day before, the paddlers kept their
distance so as not to disturb or provoke the whales.  They observed another
whale nearly a mile away approaching in their direction.  It was closing
fast.  When it arrived it made a tight circle around the small group of
kayaks.  Moving at the surface it was putting up quite a wake making lots of
waves for the kayakers.  Suddenly the whale dove and then surfaced again
aggressively under the (blue over black--there goes the yellow and white
color theory) Feathercraft folding kayak that was in the middle of the five
other kayaks.  The Feathercraft was hit very hard from below, near the
cockpit  and its occupant was flipped into the water unhurt.  Several of the
aluminum tubes of the frame were bent and one piece of tubing in the cockpit
area broke.  The skin remained undamaged and the kayak was able to be
paddled the three miles back to shore.

By the following Friday the behavior of the whales seemed back to normal but
the group of kayakers observed one whale that had a hole in its side about
six inches deep and two feet by three feet across.  Perhaps it had been
wounded by the propeller of the government tour boat before or when it was
overturned.  Whatever the cause, a wound like that might make the other
whales nervous.


Matt Broze
http://www.marinerkayaks.com



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