Whale Watching at the Farallon Islands
Well, here you are. What you all have been waiting for. Our big whale watching trip in San Francisco last weekend, to the Farallon Islands. How was it?
It was great, no doubt. As you may know, we originally planned this trip back in January on our birthday weekend. But it got postponed, due to some crazy weather happenings at the time. So this past weekend, we tried again. This time, the weather was sunny and warm.
The day started off a bit crazy. We had to be at the boat dock at 7:30AM. But I got lost on our way there, and I had forgotten to bring a map of the city. After asking someone for directions, we finally made it there, just in time. The second problem was the parking. There was supposed to be free parking at the dock, but it was all reserved. The “leader” of our group didn’t really know anything about parking. Frankly, I was quite pertubed about that. I had to find a parking spot on the street a couple blocks away. I made it back to the dock in the nick of time, before the boat was to leave.
My wife, Tara, was on board and had picked out a spot for us at the front. There was not much room on the ship for sitting down, really, as there were about 30 or so others in our group and the boat was fairly small. I wanted to sit up front for best photo ops, and that is where we stayed for the ride out to the Farallon Islands. But it was a very long ride out there. They are located 25 miles out in the ocean. On a clear day, you can see them from the mainland. But although it was sunny on this day, it was also hazy, and you couldn’t see the islands until we were almost there. It took about an hour to ride out there, and the further we got out in the ocean, the swells started getting a bit crazier and crazier. We were tossing up and down quite a lot. Sea sickness was not an issue for us (we took our Dramamine beforehand). But we did get splashed quite a bit, sitting up in the front of the boat. A couple times, we got drenched. But it was fun sitting up there. Most of the others on board decided to sit in the back of the boat, safe and warmer.
Out “leader” told us to keep a watch out for whales, that we could see them at any time. But we did not see any until well after we arrived at the islands. I was definitely wondering if we would even see any at all this day. What we did see on the trip out to the islands were: seals, porpoises, sea lions (California and Steller), and many birds including cormorants, common murres, and the pigeon guillemot. What we did not see were: great white shark, puffin, humpback or blue whales, all of which I really really really wanted to see, but I guess we were there at the wrong time of year to see these creatures.
As for whales, it was the right time of year to see the grey whale. After arriving at the islands, we made our way around to the south end of the islands, and voila. There they were. My wife thinks there were more than 2, but I think there was just a couple of them there. They were just swimming around in that area (feeding, I suppose). They would surface for a few minutes, blow water out their holes, then flick their tails up in the air and dive down underwater for about 5 minutes. We sat watching them like this for about an hour or more. Mostly, they would surface quite a ways from the boat. I took many pictures, but they were just a bit far away for the lens that I had. One time, however, and only once, a whale surfaced very close to the boat. The photos you see here were all taken during that close encounter event, all within about one minute. It was very cool. I was using a 70-200mm lens with a 1.4x extender for my photos. I really wished I had a longer lens for this trip, but I’m not a rich man. Next time, maybe, I’ll be able to take a bigger lens.
On the return trip to San Francisco, we spotted another whale just outside the Golden Gate Bridge. We stopped to watch it for 20 minutes or so. There was a lot of boat traffic in this area and once, the whale surfaced very close to a sailboat. I was watching the boaters through my telephoto lens, and I don’t think they even noticed the whale at all, even though it was probably within 100 feet of them. There was also a heckuva lot of porpoises and sea lions in this area. Some of those came very close to our boat as well. It is rather difficult to get a photo of them, though I did get one of a sea lion close to the boat.
Here’s another whale pic:
And a collage of the same whale, shots taken in quick succession:
