California Diablo Whales

September 20, 2000

Diablo Whales It was a magical day – one of the most memorable days (with nature) of my life. Maybe “day with nature” is a little strong because there was also some sophisticated technology involved. But anyway, we saw Humpback Whales in a feeding frenzy which included sea lions, brown pelicans and Western Gulls – up close and personal from a tiny helicopter.

The day with the whales started when my childhood friend, Jerry Kaml, who lives in San Luis Obispo, CA, planned the day with his distant “relative,” Wolfgang Kaml. Wolfgang’s family lives in Salzburg, Austria. His mom takes care of the house and garden and his dad works for a farmer’s credit union. His grandfathers were both farmers in the small town of Seekirchen, Austria, which means “the church on the lake.” In Salzburg, Wolfgang developed a keen interest in flying helicopters. He moved to Puebla, Mexico, where he worked as a Software Engineer for Porsche and Volkswagen. In his spare time he learned to fly where costs would be less than in Europe. Unfortunately, the air at Puebla – at 7750 ft. elevation – is rather thin for flying helicopters, so he learned to fly fixed wing aircraft.

Wolfgang's Helicopter In 1996, Wolfgang moved to San Luis Obispo (SLO), where he obtained both his fixed wing and helicopter licenses. When training in SLO, he happened to search through the telephone directory and found the name Jerry Kaml– who, coincidentally, had the same last name as Wolfgang. On a whim, he called Jerry, they made a connection and have remained friends ever since. They have not been able to trace any ancestral relationship, but it does not matter. Then, Wolfgang moved back to Mexico, obtained a job with Cayenne Software and finally obtained a three-year limited permit to work in the USA. Cayenne Software was sold to Sterling Software of Plano, TX and was later sold to CASE (Computer Associates Software Engineering) headquartered in Islandia, New York. Wolfgang has purchased a home in SLO, where he can make connecting flights to wherever in the world his work with CASE takes him.

Wolfgang entertains thoughts of flying helicopters commercially, which requires insurance. To qualify for insurance, he must have from 1000 to 2000 hours of pilot in command (PIC) flight time. At from $155 to $180 per hour for helicopter rental, it becomes an expensive hobby. But

flying is his passion, so he flies the two-seat, Robinson 22 helicopters that are manufactured in Torrence, CA. Flying by himself can sometimes become boring, so he often invites Jerry to fly with him.

Jerry had introduced Wolfgang to us a year or so ago. So when Jerry suggested that maybe Pat and I would enjoy searching for and watching whales from a tiny helicopter, Wolfgang agreed WhenJerry phoned me with the news, I was ecstatic. A helicopter ride over the California coast would be a dream trip for me. To have the added attraction of possibly seeing whales up close was a very thrilling prospect. But I was forced to refuse causePat and I both had bad colds and pink eye. “We will try later after you have recovered,” Jerry said. Sure enough, a few days later Jerry phoned and asked if we were still interested. I suppressed my immediate reaction of, “ARE YOU CRAZY! – I would give my right arm for such a trip.” Instead I quickly conveyed my enthusiasm in more subdued tones. Jerry understood.

So, Jerry and Wolfgang flew from the SLO airport and picked us up (one at a time) at the OceanoAirport. “Gosh, that helicopter is really small,” Pat remarked – with some small degree of apprehension – when she first saw our new mode of travel. “You go first,” she suggested. (Translation: If you survive, maybe I’ll consider it.) But her decision was simplified based on the fact that both Wolfgang and Jerry are big guys, so if that tiny helicopter was strong enough to carry them both, it would surely stay up in the air with Pat as a passenger.

Knowing that I wanted to take some photos during the flight, Wolfgang asked if I would like to remove the side door so that there would be no interfering windshield between me and my photographic subjects. Well, in this tiny helicopter, if the door is removed, my left shoulder is almost sticking out into air space. But I had ridden in Marine Corps helicopters with the door open, so figured this was a good idea. Wolfgang used his fingernail to remove a cotter pin, the door came off and we locked it in the back seat of my car for safekeeping.

The OceanoAirport is a small, friendly, neighborhood airport, where small hang gliders with small engines are frequently seen taking off and landing. Ray, the airport manager, had flown a hang glider out over the Pacific earlier in the day and reported to us that he had seen a couple of whales near a cable-laying ship, about two miles off the coast. Wolfgang went carefully through the preflight check list, took off and headed for the cable ship that we could see on the horizon. It was one of those perfectly clear, gorgeous California coast days. Only a very mild breeze was blowing as we rapidly gained altitude. Looking down into the open space where the door had been, I could see the kelp beds, diving pelicans and a couple of dolphins a thousand feet or so below my left shoulder. The water turned a darker, deeper blue as we left the kelp beds and

headed into the deeper ocean where the cable ship waited. A few small whitecap waves were beginning to form, but a whale’s white spout would still be clearly distinguished from the whitecaps. We circled the cable ship, a fishing boat and a trawler for a few minutes and saw no evidence of whales. We could see for miles and miles in every direction – but no spouts. I understood that a whale is not found on every whale trip, so I was reasonably content to see the beaches, towns, shoreline, cliffs, birds, mountains and blue sky from the vantage point of a helicopter offshore.

Diablo Canyon Power Plant A few days earlier, using our binoculars, Pat and I had seen a Humpback a couple of miles away and offshore from Montana de Oro State Park. It was also near the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Electrical Generating Plant. The local paper had reported an unusual amount of Humpbackfeeding there and how they are much more rare on the California coast than the Gray Whales. So, we decided to fly toward the Diablo. “There’s one,” Wolfgang yelled. (Not exactly the poetic sound of “Tharshe blows” in Moby Dick, but it sounded good to me.) Sure enough,

there – way out on the horizon – was a characteristic, mushroom-shaped puff from a whale blow hole. Then we saw another and another as we sped toward the site.

As we neared the whales, it became clear that we were about to see much more than just whales. Brown pelicans and Western Gulls had found the site and were busy diving and swimming in close association with a pack of sea lions. Apparently, the whales were stirring up enough food to attract the sea lions, pelicans and gulls. A more-or-less predictable scenario of feeding became apparent. The pelicans and gulls would congregate and feed, then the sea lions surfaced, defecated, and rested. Next the pelicans and sea lions moved away from the central feeding area as large, dark objects appeared underwater. Suddenly, a large area of white bubbles appeared on the ocean surface and thousands of small fish – maybe herring – jumped out of the water ahead of three huge, open mouths of the Humpback Whales.

Sea Lions, Gulls and Humpback Whales

I was practically beside myself. Here we were in this tiny helicopter that served as a platform for looking down into whales’ gaping mouths. The whales seemed to explode from the ocean depths to catch a mouthful of fish. I wondered what a Humpback Whale would do if they accidentally swallowed a sea lion. Would they spit it out? I don’t think I would want a large sea lion in my gut even if I were a 50-foot Humpback Whale.

One of the interesting things about Pacific Humpback Whales is the way they feed. They eat herring and krill mostly, but they don't just chase the prey wildly. Herring and krill have evolved behaviors to avoid predators: they spread out and dive for the bottom of the ocean. By spreading out, they make it so that the whale can only get a few of them, at a time. Diving offers the protection of the dark ocean bottom where they can hide.

The whales in turn have evolved some very interesting techniques for catching prey with the above avoidance behaviors. They work in groups, and use noise, fin motions, and bubbles to scare the prey toward the surface of the water, and corral them so that they cannot spread out. When the prey are trapped by walls of bubbles, and near the surface of the water, that is when the whales lunge up with their mouths open to engulf the schools of herring or krill.

Humpbacks Feeding The release of bubbles during foraging activity has been noted in a number of marine predators. Compared to other predators, however, the humpback whale is unusual in that it deploys bubbles in a much more elaborate manner, and uses them on several different prey types. There has been considerable speculation on how bubbles assist in capturing prey organisms. Most observers generally agree that predators use bubbles to frighten or herd prey, although it is not known specifically if it is the acoustic, visual, or mechanical component of the bubbles, or a combination of these attributes, that frightens the fish. (From some Humpback Whale web site that I can no longer find.)

As Wolfgang edged the little helicopter closer and closer to the active site, we began to worry that the small helicopter would disturb the whales, sea lions or birds. Maybe it was even illegal to come too close to these protected whales while they are feeding. So we kept our distance. However, my digital Olympus Camera has only a 3X zoom, so the whales were only dots in the middle of my photos. We decided to inch in closer to the activity to obtain some closer photos

while looking for some sign that we were disturbing this feeding routine. As far as I could tell, Wolfgang is an excellent pilot. Just a subtle touch of the stick caused the craft to dive down and hover near the wave tops, then we would gain altitude to obtain as many angles as we could of the action below – while keeping the sun behind us for better lighting. At one point, Wolfgang expressed concern that a whale might surface directly beneath our little craft and mistake it for a large herring. Then he said, “You know, those whales are so large and broad that I could almost land this helicopter on their backs.” I hoped that he was just kidding – Icertainly had little appetite for such high adventure. It was obvious that Wolfgang was sharing my excitement.

Once, when the Brown Pelican activity resumed, one whizzed rather close to the whirling blades of the helicopter as it dived into the ocean. It suddenly dawned on me that the whirling blades would make instant filets out of an errant pelican. But, was it also possible that such an encounter might transform this little aircraft into a boat? It did not appear particularly seaworthy.

Now white-capped waves were a common feature – evidence that the wind speed had increased. Offshore fog began to envelop our viewing area and the air became colder, making the light jacket I wore useful. We continued to monitor the whales. After surfacing, they blew only two or three times before taking another deep dive. It was always clear when they were beginning a deep dive that would last for several minutes, because during this dive their large flukes (rear flippers) came out of the water. This is a very significant behavior for whale experts because the color and shape of these flukes are different for every individual. Like human fingerprints, they are used to identify each animal. I can imagine these experts saying something like, “Hey look! There’s Hazel and her little son, Jack.”

Anyway, we continued to observe the pelicans, sea lions and whales take turns diving and feeding. I would have happily stayed all day, watching the behaviors of all these animals. However, I felt somewhat like a falcon attacking a flock of pigeons -- being indecisive about which individual animal to attack – while the whole flock escapes. It was difficult to focus on individual whales, sea lions or birds when there were hundreds of very active animals congregated in such a small area. But the longer we observed them, the easier it became to focus our attention on individuals. Reluctantly, I realized that we could not stay much longer, because Pat would want to see the same animals.

We flew back to Oceanoat about 110 MPH which required only about 10 minutes. Close to the coast line, we obtained some interesting photos of Diablo Canyon, several towns and the coast line.

When Pat returned from her trip in the helicopter, she was almost as excited as I was about the experience.

Many thanks, Jerry and Wolfgang; it was a magical day.