Santa Barbara Channel — WE know why blue whales cross open ocean to visit our coastal waters. We know, more or less, where to find them, and usually when. In fact, we understand quite a few things about these majestic giants.
Knowing about the blue whale, however, is not entirely the same as comprehending it.
You can appreciate, for instance, that these are the largest animals ever to roam our planet -- bigger than the dinosaurs, heavy as locomotives. You can realize that nowhere in the world do so many of them, perhaps up to 2,000, congregate so close to an urban center as here, just west of Highway 101, in these fading days of summer.
Or, you can venture out and look one in its mighty face.
The closer you get, the more remarkable the blue whale becomes.
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Setting off
AT 8:20 a.m., in still air and shirt-sleeve sunshine, the hawsers are let go, and Condor Express backs out of the landing in Santa Barbara Harbor.
From one direction comes the rattle-thump of a garbage truck on its Saturday rounds, and from the other point of the compass, the arf-arfing of sea lions on their routes. The demarcation of our coastline is always dramatic.
The Condor Express swings toward the channel, where the sea is empty except for flecks of birds on the go and the distant lump of Santa Rosa Island, our destination. There are 103 of us aboard this high-speed catamaran, built expressly for tracking and watching whales.
Suddenly, we're stopped. Every big show needs a warm-up act.
Bottlenose dolphins are a common sight at the harbor mouth. Creasing the water with their torpedo antics, these impressive 600-pound, 12-footers are evidence that nature has a wry sense of play.
Less than half an hour later, another deceleration. This time we've encountered a pod of 400 or so smaller common dolphins. With sharp beaks and creamy bellies, these hams plunge underneath the boat in a jet trail of bubbles. They leap clear of the indigo water on the other side for the sake of getting in the photograph. Newborns among them flash through the sea like silver footballs seeking the end zone.
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Nostalgia
IF you went to grade school in the 1950s, you might carry the memory of the day you were told that you'd never see a blue whale. The lesson was delivered without sentiment, merely as fact. By the end of the 20th century, the blue whale would vanish, just like the dinosaurs. There was just not enough room on our crowded planet for so grandiose an animal.
Perhaps you can remember how that knowledge filled you with sadness, thinking how the blue whale survived the ravages of the 19th century whaling epoch just fine. Up to 100 feet long and perhaps 200 tons, the blue was too big for men to confront in their small whaleboats with hand-thrown harpoons.
Then, technology caught up with the whales. The invention of the harpoon gun with its exploding tip and the construction of mighty steam-powered factory ships sent men after the blues with gold-rush fervor. Something like 30,000 were killed each year between 1900 and 1966. Fewer than 10,000 of the epic beasts were thought to have survived, scattered across all the great oceans. Once in awhile in the intervening years a dead whale would reach shore to remind us that blues still existed.
Alisa Schulman-Janiger and her husband, Dave Janiger, met on a blue whale on July 6, 1980.
A freighter arrived in the Port of Los Angeles, reporting a loss of power. Something mysterious had happened at sea. The vessel could no longer cruise at speed. When it came to a stop in the harbor, to the astonishment of the ship's crew, a blue whale floated to the surface, dead. It had been hit broadside and was wrapped around the ship's bow.
Alisa climbed on the carcass to take photographs. Dave, a curatorial assistant, arrived to study the rare remains for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. As she tells the story, it was love at first sight.
Today aboard the Condor Express, Schulman-Janiger is the resident naturalist for the American Cetacean Society, which has organized the trip as a fundraiser.
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In sight
ANOTHER change in velocity, only this time skipper Mat Curto mashes the throttles and the Condor Express accelerates.
From inside the boat, the vista through the windows disappears behind great sheets of spray as the boat bounces from swell to swell. Passengers, with cameras in hand and binoculars around their necks, brace themselves in the jouncing cabin and begin to inch toward the open deck. The big catamaran slows. People stream outside.
The time is 10:13 a.m., and the sun has disappeared. On the mainland, temperatures are rising into the 80s and 90s. But the Channel Islands are shivering under a marine layer.
"A humpback. Dead ahead. See the birds feeding?... There's two." Schulman-Janiger speaks over the vessel's PA system.
