Whales, kayakers get a little too close

This is why whale watchers are warned to stay 100 yards away from whale feeding areas. Or, as National Geographic's Sven Lindblad put it, "Note to self: Avoid kayaking among schooling herring or sardines."

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Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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MORE: eek! • Nature • Science • too close • whales

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phlavor

For their size, they were threading the needle between all those people.
Mark_Frauenfelder

My favorite part was the opportunistic seagulls swooping down after the whales breached.
xzzy

That does do a good job giving a sense of scale for how damn big whales are though.

Most videos are from pretty far off, and it fools the brain into thinking they’re a manageable horse sized fish or thereabouts.
andygates

AWESOME!
http://twitter.com/gfxm Tyson Mowat

yeah the seagulls freaked me out, too. This vid is just full of reasons to know where you are while kayaking!
Layne

Those three people were about 15 feet away from an unrehearsed, live-action recreation of ‘Pinocchio’.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Q35X6HG6S6BQWFN5KIHXIHKZOU The Mayor of Awesometown

We do stand up paddle boarding here in redondo beach… a buddy of mine had one completely pass under him, about 5 feet below the water. somehow he managed to stay upright even though he was tripping out with elation.. but the tail moved perfectly to not knock him over. They are very aware of their surroundings.
- http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith
  
  They are very aware of their surroundings.
  
  Yeah thats where it gets dangerous. Like us, they know exactly what they are doing and if they want to have some fun with you they will. A friend of mine was once in this situation with a group of people in proper open water kayaks. They weren’t whale watching but he got the impression the whales were people watching and did his best to get away from them.
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  Paddle boarding is quite frankly the most boring activity known to man. If a wasp had of flown past I’m sure he would have been equally as excited.
Lucas Androwick

I have an irrational fear of whales for just such a reason. At no point in time would I consider that action malicious, just unconcerned with the tiny floaty things.
Guest

You ever had a piece of popcorn in your teeth? That’s probably how you’d seem to the whale.
illicitizen

The question is did said bikini bottoms need to be changed immediately?
wrecksdart

If I’m not mistaken–and it’s entirely possible that I am–but that looks a lot like the pier at Santa Cruz, with Steamer Lane, Indicators, and Cowells in the background. Some friends have asked why surfing is such a big deal to me, and this video says it all. I’ve seen whales breaching, dolphins hunting, otters munching, and numerous other sublime sights of nature in action while I was on the water.
Great video–whales certainly are one of the most awesome creatures in the ocean.
- thivai
  
  Ya, this happened in Santa Cruz. It made the rounds with the local papers/media here yesterday. It is a humpback. There have been more whales than usual a lot closer than usual because of food supplies, I think. Monterey By is kind of a whale buffet at the moment.
  This video has also spawned some silly Free Willy shit here. People are now starting to get ticketed because everyone wants a close encounter with a humpback. I’ll tell you though. The danger isn’t getting eaten, it’s getting breathed on. Whale breath stinks.
http://twitter.com/blindeschildpad Blinde Schildpad

Well, if they’d just gone to Niniveh like The Man said in the first place, they wouldn’t have been in no trouble, now would they?
http://artdonovan.typepad.com Art

Wonderfully frightening!
The calm scene of the kayak and surfer interrupted by the breaching whale SO CLOSE to the camera. WOW!!!!
chgoliz

How was the video shot? No shakiness, no exclamations of surprise…the kayakers say they’ve “never been so far out” but it seems the camera must have been on a tripod on solid footing somehow.
- Guest
  
  or, you know, image stabilizing technology. Did you even LIKE the video?
Gnatcatcher

The 100 foot rule is meant to keep humans in boats from harassing or possibly injuring whales, not the other way around.
http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm

That looks to be some species of baleen whale – a humpback? – so it wouldn’t actually have been able to swallow the surfer. Nevertheless, I’ll hazard a guess that being trapped in a whale’s mouth while it slurps down a few hundred gallons of mixed sardines and seawater would not be the most comfortable experience, even if it did spit you out later.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Abdul-Alhazred/100000416725737 Abdul Alhazred

We’re going to call the first part of the Jonah myth, getting swallowed by a whale: plausible.
The next step involves Tory spending three days inside this whale stomach facsimile we created out of plastic tubing and pigs guts.
Coming up later: an exploding whale! Hey.. it’s a part of the contract.
lavardera

pretty cool the way the water started “boiling” with fish trying to get out of the way just the instant before the wall appeared
http://duckduckgrayduck.wordpress.com/ JJ Bugs

How they don’t frantically start paddling away is beyond me.
Shibi_SF

They are all very calm about it. I could have easily walked on water to run from the whale, or at least grabbed onto the closest kayak and climbed on top of who ever had the paddle. And I’d be pretty embarrassed right now because all of you would be laughing at me!
wrecksdart

As I watched the video, the thought occurred to me that people might think how cool it was to be so close, and therefore to attempt the same proximity as the videographer. I think watching wild animals, no matter how smart, is best done from a comfortable distance, lest the weak, pink, fleshy human take a 15 foot fluke to the head.
bbonyx

There was a great (BBC, I think) series a few years ago titled Nature’s Most Amazing Events which had a segment on this very thing from the perspectives of the birds, the seals, the fish and the whales (the first two attempting to capitalize on the whale’s “misses” of the fish). They have a diver in the water with a camera and he almost goes in the whale’s mouth. It’s all shot much better than this and gives a great explanation of what was going on at every level. Check it out if you found this intriguing.
http://hellsdonuthouse.com/ Hell’s Donut House

@boingboing-5c971edc0c2cc92fc99b5a3609450cb7:disqus : oh yeah, obviously staged [insert eye-roll smiley]

I was just thinking how much I appreciated the fact that it was thankfully free from multiple exclamations of “Holy shit! Holy shit!” The one time a whale came near me, I was too awestruck to speak.
Zac

Honestly, the whales come so close, but actually affect the kayakers (and paddleboarder) so little, I have to assume the trajectory was well thought out by the whales and the people were never in any danger. Not that amateurs swimming with whales is a good plan, but it does look like the whales saw them and avoided them purposefully.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1128324543 Ken Ballweg

Undoubtedly shot with a telephoto lens causing “compression” or the appearance of the whale breaching closer to the people in the water than it actually was. Notice how, despite the amount of water the whale displaces, the kayak isn’t tossed around all that much. Also notice how relatively calm the surfer and kayakers appear. I suspect it was a thrill but not as dangerous as people are assuming based on the way it looks on the video.
DouglasLucchetti

I’ve kayaked among whales in Alaska repeatedly, and generally keep some distance but not necessarily freak out about it..it IS really something to be close but you don’t have to be too close…keeping an eye out for when the gulls start hovering overhead is a good idea since they can see down into the water and see the bait fish balling-up and bubbles rising from the humpbacks’ using bubble nets. The big concern for kayakers in particular is not so much that one would get eaten (these baleen whales’ esophagus is not designed to swallow large things) but rather that you’ll get spilled into some pretty cold water and have to deal with that which can mean an abreviated trip or maybe much worse depending on where you are and how well prepared you are. As for whales knowing where they are…it’s true to some extent, though there have been rare but documented instances of humpback whales actually colliding with boats and causing the boats to sink. One instance was a collision with a whale and a small airboat travelling at high speed which resulted in humans dying in the cold water and the stranding of a party of hunters waiting in the cold and rain on a remote beach that were waiting for that boat to supply them. For a while a high speed flying craft for ferrying between coastal villages that employed the surface effect was being considered in coastal areas but the idea of whales breaching into one was a legitimate concern.
phuzz

I’m pretty sure that’s two whales, not just one.
(one closer tot he camera moving r-l, one behind that facing away fromt he camera on the lh side, visible as the first one moves out the way.)
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com Santa Cruz Sentinel

Here’s a little more from the woman who shot the video: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_19256988
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Roettger saw the whales’ telltale bubble net surfacing, but it was too late to move.
  
  That’s what it reminds me of. Liet Kynes.