WHALES ARE VERY BIG

Between a new school, Snakes on a Plane, drinking to the point of nausea, and a journey to the true edge of the continent, the past week provided more journal munitions than I am prepared to load, tamp, and fire. I’ll settle for the only one that came with pictures.

Despite a childhood spent on unsalty shores from which nary a cetacean was ever sighted, Maggie harbors a long-standing passion for whales. The tantalizing pseudosuccess of our sojourn to Point Reyes last spring having left her unsated, she suggested a proper whale watching expedition. Like, on a boat. In the ocean. And so it was that we found ourselves on Captain Frank’s Lovely Martha this foggy morning, speeding under the shrouded Golden Gate.

I’ll shut up now and make with the pictures, but before I do, know that we saw ample humpback whales, harbor porpoises (porpi?), harbor seals, sea lions, murres, puffins, guillemots, and other things I can’t remember. Oh, and that we highly recommend both the Lovely Martha and SF Bay Whale Watching (despite the lacluster website of the latter).

Ok, just a few more of my paltry little words. The Farallones are even more desolate up close than they appear from shore, and that, sir, is unspeakably desolate. The only visible pieces of vegetation on the islands were two trees planted next to the two houses there. The naturalist on our trip told us the trees were there to house errant migratory songbirds, but I suspect they do more to bolster the sanity of the local human population. We were told that native people of the area actually rowed the 20 miles out there (for what I don’t know), and that families of Westerners manned a lighthouse until recent times when the whole area was designated a marine sanctuary and biologists became the only human residents. I cannot imagine the life. The islands have no safe harbors or landings, so you must disembark by crane. Where there is not bare rock and pebble there is bird shit, and where the birds haven’t shat they have laid their precious endangered eggs. The reek of guano was pungent off shore, to say the least. It must approach the unbearable upon dry land.

That said, it was precisely the sort of place I might imagine Capt. Jack Aubrey nervously checking his watch while good Stephen Maturin ambles over the rocks with glee, gawking at awks (forgive me).