Mark Girardeau positioned his drone directly above the newborn calf and its massive mother, his eyes glued to the screen of his remote control as he watched the pair of gray whales while aboard Newport Coastal Adventure’s small inflatable boat.
The baby – thought to be just days old – suddenly veered away from its mother and headed toward whale watchers on Sunday afternoon.
“They’re coming right toward us, guys,” said Girardeau, a photographer who frequents whale-watching charters to capture footage of creatures in the wild. “Wait, the baby just split up, the baby is coming straight toward us! Oh, wow. The mom is coming right toward us too!”
It was a rare moment off Laguna’s coastline captured on video as the baby, born during the southbound migration to Mexico, glided beneath the boat. Even rarer was when the mom had to come fetch the baby and get back on track, the mother’s 45-foot-long body swimming just below the 23-foot inflatable boat.
“They’re right here, they’re right under the boat! No freaking way! No way!” Girardeau could be heard screaming on the video. “They’re right under the boat! Oh my God! No freaking way!”
Girardeau on Monday was still reeling from the experience. He said he didn’t want to take his eyes from the drone screen he clutched in his hands, even when the calf popped its head up next to the bow.
“I really wanted to stop and enjoy it. But if I took my eyes off the iPad, I miss the shot and no one will believe me,” he said.
There were several boats watching the pair during their migration, but it was the Newport Coastal Adventure boat the whales found intriguing.
As the whale duo approached, the boat’s captain, Taylor Thorne, cut the engine both for safety and as part of whale etiquette.
“We were just sitting still in the water. The whales had the ability to do anything they wanted,” Girardeau said. “They made the decision to change course and check out our boat.”
It’s unclear what prompted the baby whale to check out the small boat.
“I don’t know if the baby got confused and mistook our boat for another whale. Maybe since the baby was less than a few days old, the baby was still trying to figure out what’s happening in the world,” Girardeau said.
The mom didn’t seem as curious.
“It seemed like the mom just wanted to put the baby back on track to go toward Mexico,” he said. “I’m sure she’s seen lots of boats before. She was more like, ‘Hey, get back here.’”
Was Thorne nervous when the mother whale – about twice the size of the boat he was helming – swam underneath?
“I felt safe and I was comfortable knowing the whales were very gentle,” he said. “They were just calm, they didn’t feel like any threat or anything.”
Thorne said when the baby popped up its head next to the bow, “it was one of the most unreal experiences I’ve had out there … you literally could have reached out and touched it.”
Down in warmer-water lagoons in Baja, gray whales come up close to the boats and charter passengers can hold their hands out to touch their heads or even pet their tongues. But it’s not a behavior typically seen in Southern California.
Thorne said moms tend to be protective of their calves, but this mother seemed to be allowing her calf to explore the world.
“It let the baby do what it wanted to do. I think it led to the experience being a lot less scary and a lot more … exciting,” Thorne said.
He said it all happened so fast, it took a moment to realize the magnitude of what happened.
“It took us until they left the boat to process what was going on,” he said. “It was so exciting and so thrilling, time went so fast. None of us were ready for it.”
Thorne knows an encounter like this is a “once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.”
Contact the writer: lconnelly@scng.com
