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Studying Sea Giants
By
Olga von Ziegesar Dedicated
to Ken Norris, who taught me to observe nature and to always have the greatest
adventure of our lives. Spiraling down, shafts of sunlight piercing the dark
Alaskan waters, two humpback whales swim in harmony, descending, weaving
through the light spears with grace. Deeper and darker now, they are relying on
other senses to find their prey. The giant leviathans’ undulating bodies are thrusting with wide tail and
supple fins. They reach a cloud of
krill at three hundred feet and split, circling rapidly with intention, their
wake creating a wall of force, scaring and condensing the tiny shrimp. Then, a discreet change of pace, or
perhaps a glance of a whale’s white fin, signals the attack. Both whales turn inward and lunge
through the mass with mouth extended and stomach pleats loose. A rush of water, shudder of baleen, the
jaws move forward and up to close. Bristle stiff hairs comb the streaming water and trap in the small
crustaceans forced down the throat by tongue and jaw. I visit these glacial carved bays every summer
following the humpback whales. The
whales and I both are here when the light lasts all night. We know these bays and passages like we
know our roots, our skin, our offspring. When the winter comes the whales leave, migrating to tropical waters
near the equator. In Alaska snow
covers dormant delicate meadows, and trees lean against violent storms. The birds fly to continents south and I
return to my hometown of Homer, one hundred miles away, driving kids to school,
keeping schedules, and stoking the woodstove to stay warm. Now we are all back, our summer clocks drawing us here
like magnets. Plants, algae, and
zooplankton unfold and reproduce, exploding with the intense sunlight. Beards of grey green moss hang off the spruce trees
that grow out of rocks, sometimes splitting them open in the impossibility of
surviving here. The branches are ragged from so much wind and rain. Yet sunlight passes through fans of
millions of tiny delicate needles. A bald eagle, perched on a top branch, watches like a statue, its
patience is as old as the gods watching from the heavens. It can see details I cannot. With a
silver flash of fish near the surface, it will drop off its limb and swoop down
skimming the surface with claw-like talons as large as a child’s hand. The
timing has to be exquisite, grabbing, flapping, and gaining altitude before the
water grabs back. My friend Shelley and I and are spending ten days at my
whale camp on a small beach on the elbow of Knight Island Passage in Prince
William Sound. Here whales travel
near the shoreline, their loud blows sometimes wake us in our sleeping bags.
The wooden tent frame weathers each winter like a whale rib cage washed up
above the tide line. Storm ice
scours and rams the beach. In
spring we stretch the old white miner’s tent over grey boards, dig dishes and
tools out of a damp rock cave, and join sections of pipe for the Yukon
stove. This humble canvas becomes
our mansion on one hundred feet of rocky beach. In storms we tie down the flaps, hang wet clothes from
strings and nails, and huddle, around the rusty stove. I think often of those
early explorers camping in these tents on the glacier near Valdez. They left everything familiar and comfortable
behind in hopes of digging gold out of the harsh Alaskan wilderness. For me it has been a driving urge to
follow and know this small group of humpback whales that come to the Prince
William Sound in the northern apex of the Gulf of Alaska each summer. I first
came here in 1971 on a kayak trip lead by experienced mountain climbers from
Wyoming. None of us had ever been
to Alaska, nor had we paddled sea kayaks. A mixed group, thrown together, one woman postal worker from Milwaukee,
a farm boy from Ohio, a man sixty years old, without his wife and children, a
thin kid from California who quit college, and me. We paddled for five weeks, following the shoreline and
crossing passages when the water was flat, picking a new beach each night with
fresh water and enough room to set up twelve tents. We fished and ate limpets, snails and mussels we pulled off
the exposed rocks. When we were
very low on food we shot a bear. Small heads with big brown eyes of seals and
sea otters watched our curious group as paddles dipped and the small kayak
bodies glided along. In still
coves we glided along shoreline alarming Harlequin sea ducks that ran on the
water as they beat their wings to get air. We saw one boat the whole time. I was a tough seventeen year old and
had grown up a tomboy in the suburbs of Connecticut. I knew how to camp and canoe, but I had never known this
kind of silence. Thirty-five years later, with early morning coffee, Shelley
and I sit on the front edge of the tent platform and look out across the water
toward Icy and Whale Bays. The
camel back of Dual Head peaks towers in blue sky and I remember climbing it in
early summer two years ago with our kids and our skis. Just off camp the
Pleiades Island group, made up of seven rocky dots spread across the
intersection of five passages look like the constellation in the night sky, and
can be seen from many angles. On
the north island a light beacon flashes warning to mariners. Our boat hangs off a mooring made from a rock bag of
scavenged trawl web, rope, and buoy. Sometimes we spot a blow from here, other mornings our camp radio
attached to antennae in a tree, calls. Boaters hail us with whale sightings. I jump in my kayak and bring the boat into shore. We load fuel, notebooks and food and
are on our way. The call is to
Bainbridge Passage, four miles away. As
we approach we see two small puffs on the water near shore. These blows are about ten feet high but
from a distance they look like a very little mushroom cloud of vapor. We stop the boat and wait. Together the whales rise, their muscles aching for
air. They burst through the glassy surface, bending water tension, expelling a
rush of stale air. Through twin
blowholes fresh air is sucked into a hollow the size of a small car. We feel our selves pulled into the
power of these leviathans. How has this large dinosaur-like mammal survived the
wrath of man, harpoon, and global shipping? The whale is the largest animal in the world and lives on a
diet of the tiniest ocean creatures. Shelley maneuvers the 26-foot motor sailor in behind
the giants as I dive for the hatch, and my camera. For a moment we forget the peace of this place as we
scramble for data. Approaching
with the goal of a well-framed fluke photograph, Shelley must compensate for the
will of tidal currents and breeze. Now we rely on silent communication, using the power of intimacy of our
long friendship. I hold the camera nearly focused, estimating the length of
zoom so the tail, as wide as a kayak-length, is in the frame. Our hands and minds calm. The auto focus is whirring and I forget
to breathe as the whale arches high with an extra thrust, bending its massive
tail stem. Vertebrae, by vertebrae
it rolls and rolls. Finally the
tail appears, water flowing off smooth black skin, in a curtain. It flips up and there, for a split
second, is the identity of this whale. Click, click, click, the camera whirs off three photos before the tail
drops, the huge whale descending again, leaving only a circle spreading on the
smooth icy water. Breaking our
silence Shelley calls out to me. Following behind its partner, the other whale is arching. I whirl to shift the camera, refocus
and catch the other tail on film. As the two tail prints dissipate and the still water
turns back to reflection, Shelley kills the engine and we both take a deep
breath. A thin whistle of a pigeon
guillemot breaks the silence as the little black seabird paddles with bright
red flippers, scanning for scraps and moving away from the boat. Lichen and moss hang off ancient
trees. An eagle is watching from a
broken limb. I struggle balancing intellect and wonder, breaking
the harmony of nature for the sake of science. The photographs of these tails
will be compared to many others taken throughout the North Pacific Ocean. Digitized and computerized, the unique
markings of pigmentation are stored in the Marine Mammal Lab at the National
Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle. Being able to recognize a wild animal over
time gives the scientist clues of its life story. The whale cannot be tagged, collared or branded and roams a
vast territory. So researchers around the globe are gathering the photographic
record of the unique humpback tails. A quarter of the three hundred whales we
have identified in the Sound have been seen in Hawaii, and six were recognized
off a small island group of Baja California. The rest must be migrating to more deserted waters in the
North Pacific Ocean. We are snatching the magic of this moment, to document
the existence of these particular whales feeding in Prince William Sound. I mark on a data sheet; Whale IDs: Z9
and Y5, deep feeding together in the mouth of Bainbridge Passage. A GPS (Global Positioning) designates
the exact time and location in the world, and the digital camera records the
frame numbers. Our children
have softened the science by naming the whales after heroes of fairy tales and
pirates. Snow White and
Gwenivere, where have you been? Across the seas, through schools of fish and shipping lanes of foreign
flag? Have you been to warm
turquoise waters along volcanic shoreline where tourist boats follow and
singing males are courting? For weeks you swim to get back to this pristine
place where the fish school and we meet again. While waiting for the whales to surface again, my mind
wanders down to the depths where those two must be working together to
catch elusive crustaceans. In reality, we only have the evidence,
clues based on the mammals’ behavior at the surface when they come to breath
oxygen. The rest is all up to our
imagination. I first
came here to study the whales in 1980 with my college friend Beth, a little
money, and her dog. It was my
senior thesis project for the University of California at Santa Cruz. We would camp and document the feeding areas
and the flukes of all the humpback whales we could find. My boyfriend, Bill Bledsoe, took us and
our gear out in his large king crab fishing boat, the Kamishak Queen. He helped us choose a spot for our
camp. We looked for a sight with water, a place to safely moor the boat, and a
good viewpoint for whales. We chose the mouth of Whale Bay. When the Kamishak Queen left they took all the
comforts and communication of the outside world. With only the shelter of a small dome tent and a plastic
tarp we began our study. The first
morning, sitting on round grey beach stones, we felt small and isolated as we
heated tea over a small fire. Beth
packed peanut butter and carrots and we launched our fifteen-foot inflatable
rubber boat, loaded the dog and camera, and set out to find some whales. The water was glassy calm in the middle of lower
Knight Island Passage. A blow hung
in the air with no breeze to disperse it. We were jittery with excitement but
approached slowly. We drew near
and found the whale was moving slower than our lowest idle speed. Its blowhole was only a few feet away.
As it inhaled it seemed as though we could be sucked right in! The leviathan dwarfed our small
boat. Beth shifted the outboard to
neutral and I stood in the bow balancing as I braced my camera with long lens
and waited to take my first fluke photograph. The whale had moved less than we predicted and we drifted
right over it. There was a
boat length of creature off both bow and stern! Suddenly the whale arched high. We were too close. The tips of the tail were protruding out
both sides of our tiny rubber hull! As each bump of its vertebrae passed in front of the bow the adrenalin
pumped through me! With grace and
intuition, the whale twisted its tail delicately, sliding out from under the
raft and dropping into the water! Down it went. I could have
touched its crusty tail. With my
300 mm lens I was able to focus on five white cookie size circles on the tip of
its fluke! For these we named it
"Oreo", Beth’s favorite food. We collapsed in the boat, screeching with laughter and relief! Our photographing techniques became more refined after
that first encounter. We saw Oreo
in all parts of the study area that summer with many different whales. His gregariousness made us think he was
a young male. He has been in the
Sound almost every year since then, however, in 1990, "he" arrived
with a calf alongside! Humpbacks reach physical maturity at around ten years
of age. We surmise that at the
time of that first encounter Oreo was a juvenile female, maybe one or two years
old. Now she is at least
twenty-six and has had a few other calves. The
animals are too big to capture, sex, and measure, so sighting histories through
the years help us to piece together the whales’ stories. I have returned to the
Sound for twenty-five years with different friends, usually other mothers, and
our kids. The camp is now on the
opposite side of the passage and we still find the same whales that Beth and I
photographed from that little raft in 1980. When
the humpback whales arrive in Alaska they are starving. They have eaten very little food
through their migration, mating, and calving. Depending on the kind of prey they are chasing they behave
differently. We adjust our approach to their feeding strategy. When a frenzy of whales is feeding on fish schools it
seems there are blows everywhere with a lot of splashing and crashing. Like
flocks of migrating shorebirds, the tiny fish (Herring, Sand lance, Capelin or
salmon fry) move in mass near the surface, switching directions rapidly. I imagine the whales cutting through
the swarm in different places blocking with breaching body, or slapping tails
and pectoral fins. When the fish are very shallow, a whale may even use the
surface as a wall to fish against. Its snout lunging out of the water as it gulps, with flocks of gulls
diving and arguing over scraps. We
follow the birds as they hover and rest. Somehow they know where the whale will come up next. With a blow from below, the gulls
scatter. Alert,
with engine running, we try to maneuver through the pandemonium to position for
a fluke photograph. The animals
are hard to align with. They use
shallow dives and rarely show their tales. We try different angles and shoot off photos when we
can. We watch for lunging
whales. I have had them knock the
boat while in pursuit of fish. Once
I was trying to photograph a lone whale lunge feeding south of Little Green
Island. It was in shallow water near a reef. My neighbor, Loretta was with our four kids and
me. Motoring around seemed
intrusive in this confined area and it was difficult to predict where the whale
would surface next. We decided to
drift and watch with the engine idling so the whale would know where we
were. In long Alaskan twilight we
had just poured tea and the kids were below preparing a snack. Suddenly
the whale came barreling out of the water in a full breach within a few feet of
our stern. Water cascaded off its
giant body and arm-like pec fins, droplets reflecting and flowing through
grooves and crevices. Looking like a tied dancer, it had the towrope to our kayak draped over
its shoulder! It crashed down
leaving us rocking in its wake and the kayak bobbing frantically. We moved away
rapidly leaving the whale feeding in peace. A
freight barge has called reporting at least twenty humpback whales blowing off
Hanning Bay, in Montague Strait. This gateway to the Sound is wider than any other body of water we work
in. Flowing into the power of the
Gulf of Alaska, the entrances of Prince William Sound wash with tides and huge
schools of fish. Pods of killer
whales dip in from the open water searching for food. Pelagic birds of rock and cape gather in huge rafts. In deep massive ribbons, herring
congregate, feeding and waiting for spring when they emerge and coat the
shoreline with a frosting of tiny white eggs. Angry
weather can blow in rapidly. The closest bays, Hanning and Macleod, face the
Gulf and the mercy of gail winds, and offer us little shelter. We feel vulnerable. It takes our boat about an hour to
cross from the haven of Knight Island Passage. Finally we spot clusters of little puffs against
distant shore. Whales are
scattered along the drift of the out flowing tide. The Herring are over a hundred feet deep. It is not such frenzy. The whales dive for ten minutes at a
time and feed on the masses of fish. We choose one and wait. Finally it is up with another whale, about a quarter mile
away. Shelley runs at full speed, slowing for the approach. I fight to keep the camera dry and yet
ready for the shot. They dive, and
I am able to get one fluke photograph, but not the other. We wait again. They surface, but now they are separate
again. With my binoculars, I try
to recognize the whale we still need to photograph by its dorsal fin. “It’s that one over there.” We race over, again trying to calm in
time to focus. It is a different
whale. Now there are three
diving. We wait. I imagine whales randomly moving down
deep through millions of silver fish with mouths wide, scooping as they
swim.Blasting up, exhausting stale air, they appear down
current. Adjusting to wind and
swell we get two out of three. And
so the day goes, moving up and down the passage with the whales, concentrating
on patterns of black and white, distinguishing twenty different animals inthis
smattering of blows on ocean swell. My head aches from bouncing and
memorizing. Alone out here at the
Entrance to the Gulf with thegreatness of these animals, we are humbled. Shafts of setting sun pass between
walls of rocky capes down the outer coastline. I take over driving, giving
Shelley a break. The wind rushes
through my hair, salt spray showers my face, and I watch a Jaeger chase gulls
as we make our way back across the wide passage to the shelter of our little
speck of tent on deserted beach. Copyright © 2007 Olga von Ziegesar, All Rights
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