Friends visiting Tuesday night happened to mention that a krill bloom drew 64 blue whales to Monterey Bay last weekend, the most in 30 years. I checked online, found that sightings were ongoing, and booked a whale watch for the next day. Only the Sea Goddess had seats available.

We left around 12:30, setting off at a dead run westward as soon as we cleared the harbor.

The humpbacks were in full Cirque du Soleil mode, slapping pectoral fins, showing flukes, and breaching, unbelievably, more times than we could count. At one point, two humpbacks seemed to be having a breaching contest on a course roughly paralleling us to the right. They were far away, but one could clearly see the whale shape rise above the water then fall, creating a huge splash.

Captain Julie ignored all this activity with unflagging focus. Naturalist Stephanie kept apologizing for not investigating by saying, We have some place we went to take you. The elephant in the room–a poor metaphor in this case, since even humpback whales are much, much larger than elephants–was the Blue Whale. N.S. wasn’t going to promise that unless she could deliver.

Then we were there. Blues and humpbacks were feeding in the same area, the humpbacks continuing their distracting behavior. Blue whales are a light greyish blue, as compared to the dark grey of humpbacks. The blues are stately, backs gently arcing above the surface then disappearing slowly. The arc seems to go on and on. We saw several, sometimes two or three at a time, not at all far away. One even showed its fluke. They are big, much bigger than the boat.

In the first shot, you can see the relatively small dorsal fin toward the left, and it in the second it is toward the right, giving a bit of an idea of how long the back is. The third shot is pretty blurry; I’m trying to show the height of the spout. Amateurish and scale-free, these pictures aren’t that helpful. For the first few minutes of the encounter, I was rapt, and nearly didn’t take any.

Our two-hour tour lasted three-and-a-half hours, because we had to travel thirteen miles to find the blues. No one complained.