Whale Watching in Monterey Bay

I recently went on a whale-watching cruise in Monterey Bay, leaving from the small city of Santa Cruz. We spent quite a long time watching a pair of humpback whales – a mother and her calf – feeding on anchovies in the bay. As an extra treat, we also encountered a great white shark.

The presence of humpback whales in Monterey is a major conservation victory. Three shore-based whaling stations, one in Monterey Bay and the other two in San Francisco Bay, hunted for the great whales during the 1950s and early 60s.

Dr. Dale Rice reported (in “The Whale Problem” (1974) edited by William Schevill) that these shore stations took a large number of humpback whales during those years, only stopping when the International Whaling Commission (IWC) ordered all countries to cease killing humpback whales in 1965. In a chart he notes that in 1956, 133 humpback whales were harpooned, with 199 being slaughtered the next year. But after that, the numbers killed began to fall. In 1961, only 67 were found and harpooned. In 1964, only 27 were killed. Finally, with international protection by the IWC, only 4 humpback whales were found and killed in 1965. The species had been virtually eliminated along the Central California coast.

Back in 1976, when I started running whale-watching trips for the Sierra Club out of San Francisco Bay, we seldom would see any humpback whales. By the early 1980s, a few began to appear and were eventually common enough that summer and fall cruises of San Francisco to the Farallon Islands could advertise sightings of humpback whales. These sightings were still marginal – I would guess 25% to 50% of my trips around this time did not see any humpback whales, try as we did to find them.

But today, both humpback whales and larger (and impressive) blue whales are very common visitors to Monterey Bay and offshore San Francisco. In recent years, humpback whales are practically a guaranteed sighting every time. Truly a great occasion to celebrate the return of the humpbacks to Central California!

Humpbacks along the California coast head south during the winter months to breed and give birth to young off the Central Coast of Mexico. (Unlike the gray whales, who give birth in the waters of bays along the Baja coast, humpback whales go further south and give birth at sea.) There is also some interchange with the humpbacks who feed mainly in the Gulf of Alaska and migrate to the Hawaiian Islands to give birth.

We also encountered a young great white shark, “only” ten feet long. The adults can get fifteen to twenty feet or more, truly massive animals. Our shark swam very calmly alongside our boat, with the captain keeping a slow pace with the animal. While I’ve seen great white sharks around the Farallon Islands off San Francisco, this encounter was quite a bit closer than those other occasions. To get any closer, I would have to be in the water with them.

Great white sharks have a bad reputation from movies like “Jaws” and many others about “killer” sharks. While there are occasional attacks on humans by great white sharks, it is still fairly rare. And of course, we humans kill many more sharks that the reverse! The great white is now protected in California and listed as protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

There are many whale-watching operations around the world that take people out for an experience of the wild ocean. I encourage you to visit one soon, and enjoy some of our great ocean life.

Our oceans are extremely fragile, but simple steps (like stopping the killing of whales and dolphins) can have excellent results, as the return of the humpbacks shows. We need to protect the whales, the dolphins, the sharks, and many other marine species from our human environmental ignorance and greed.

Photographs by Mark J. Palmer/Earth Island Institute.

THE INTERNATIONAL MARINE MAMMAL PROJECT OF EARTH ISLAND INSTITUTE IS DEDICATED TO PROTECTING WHALES, DOLPHINS AND THEIR MARINE HABITAT ALL AROUND THE WORLD. PLEASE JOIN US AND HELP US CONTINUE OUR EFFORTS TO END WHALING AND DOLPHIN KILLING, PROTECT CETACEANS FROM FISHING THREATS, AND END CAPTIVITY FOR ALL CETACEANS. YOUR DONATIONS ARE DEEPLY APPRECIATED.