Excursion: Road, Water, Road

Fieldwork

JP, working.

Harber Seals: Sonoma Coast

Zoom shots from an amphib-camera meant for close-work underwater;  I didn't want to disturb the creatures by paddling into their discomfort zone.

Notebook: Whale-Watching / Kayaking

1.  I will have to set aside the camera a bit more deliberately to engage my whole sight and other senses.    Next time around.  The camera itself, turning it on, fussing with zooming and focusing, really narrows the experience.  I love having the shots to document and to spark memories, but I want to look and see more fully in the moment.

2.  The experience really was rooted in wet neoprene, in the seat of the wetsuit, in the motion of the swell under the kayak, in the lifting and the dropping and the shifting and the pulling and the pushing.  On the afternoon of the 30th, the tug was back into the harbor, but the swell was rising and the wind had created chop, so there was a constant motion -- up down thisway thatway-- that the morning had lacked, had been so flat and calm.  I love the water movement, and the sit-on-top is so well-crafted to ride such movements.  Even now, two days later, if I just sit and unfocus, I am moving in my mind with residual body sense-memories.  A lovely sensation to me.

3.  Then, besides the emphatic floating quality, the sounds!  So many birds flying, shrieking, calling, ker-plunking into the water after the anchovies.  Pelicans and terns and murres and cormorants and classic gulls.  Terns and pelicans out with us, mostly.  Then, the barking of sea lions in the distance, the splashing of seals nearby, the crunching-lunching of otters.  The chatter of humans: excited, agitated, inane.  "HOLY SHIT" were the first words out of one fellow's mouth, as he rounded the small point to leave the harbor only to be faced with a lunging whale.  (That fellow was off his game, more nervous than his date, and he shadowed JP and me off and on, nervously.  Still, such caution in such a situation is no bad thing, and his date may have been more water-savvy -- or simply oblivious -- than he was.)  The whales' spouting, blowing, and splashing.  Occasionally, the power station would let out great blasts of steam that would mimic the whale spouts--and would confuse me, for a moment, as I looked for that other whale.  The water made the most noise and the most noises, lapping and slapping and splashing and crashing along and onto the jetty, the kayak, the whales, itself.

Kayaking: Humpback Whale off Moss Landing

No zoom here, so this whale was even closer than it looks in the photo!

And I had back-paddled before taking the shot because I could see bubbles and possibly a back beneath and just in front of my kayak.

And, JP reminds me:  "And just picture how much whale there is below the surface: more than 2/3s of the humpback lies ahead of its 'hump' & its ventral fins are about the length of the tail section that's visible here."

A very special moment on a very special day:  I felt blessed.  Still do.

The Surfer and the Shadow

 What's that shadow in the water?

Probably, a mass of kelp.  There was quite a bit of kelp in the water, in the surfzone, and on the shore.

Dolphin?  Seal?  Maybe a fellow surfer or two duck-diving?

Here's the picture I took just before the one with the shadow in the water.

Bolinas Lagoon: Friends and Seals

Harbor Seals: Glimpses

And away the seal goes!

Bolinas Lagoon today.

I wish I'd captured one of the big splashes the seals make sometimes, though why they choose to exit that way I just don't know.

I Like Seals

Low Tide Wall-Shots, The Alley, and a Watchful Seal

I first saw this seal as he floated two feet beneath my kayak, watching me as I paddled slowly about his rock garden, though I didn't get that photo.  He moved off and away, watching me from the surface as I put more distance between us.  I don't want to get too close and infringe on such creatures.  (Close shots can be taken from far-enough-away; that's why I have the zoom on the camera.)