orca whale watching dominical

orca whale watching dominical 

The boat is quietly rocking in the gentle swells.  We have come close to a place not too far offshore where our guide had spotted a blow, an eight-foot geyser of spray like a salty feather adorning a dark lump in the glassy green of the sea.  We had all caught a glimpse of a tail, and nearby, a bit of fin, and then nothing.  So we sit, silently drifting in the coastal current. 

There is something quite unnerving about knowing that somewhere down in the depths below your suddenly small-seeming boat an intelligent and fully adapted creature the length of a ranch house is torpedoing through the coolness, chugging schools of small herring and not-quite-so-small mackerel like a college pledge on a spring-break bender.  Shadowy intimations of ancient Pinocchio - prompted terrors creep out of deep storage. Tick...tock...Then someone shouts and points, and we turn our heads just as a 100 yards away, this gloriously slick black and white-bellied creature in a staggering feat of strength, propels twenty-five tons of itself completely free of all marine clutches, and hangs, horizontally suspended, for a split second of time standing still, before the clock restarts with the jolting slap-swoosh of the mother of all belly flops.   Every human jaw is slack and open, every heart is pounding: it is an epiphanic moment.  "That," shouts the guide, "was one heck of a humpback breach!"  "Funny," I think, "it looked like Yahweh to me