3 cameras, 0 whale pictures

The gray whales are migrating north from Mexico to Alaska now. The waves were predicted to be low on Saturday, so it seemed like good conditions to go paddle and try to view some whales. So we launched early Saturday morning from Pigeon Point. We had 3 cameras with us, so we could hopefully get some good photos.

Shortly after launching, we did see a mother and calf. They would surface for air a few times, and then dive for a minute or two. It was a game to try to predict where they would surface next.

We followed them for a while. Some of the others thought they were going faster than they were, so lost track of them. Sylvia and I stayed back (or were just slower), and ended up being close to where they were, so had some decent views of them surfacing a a half dozen times or so.

Unfortunately, even with 3 cameras between the 2 of us, we got no good shots or video clips. The picture above, which Sylvia took, almost caught it - I marked the whale with a red arrow (that is me in the yellow boat to the right of the picture - yes I am holding my camera up and trying to take a photo, and no it didn't come out...).

We have gone whale watching before, and which I wrote about last year at this Blog post from watching gray whales in the same area and this post where we went to watch humpback whales in Monterey. Got better pictures both times.

Below are 2 photos from this trip last weekend that did come out. One shows me, and the other shows Sylvia and one of the other folks on the paddle with us.