Man Travels 5000 Miles to Check Out O.C.’s Whales
DANA POINT – As Bernard Roffey boards the 50-foot catamaran, the captain puts out his hand to help him on board.
“You again?” the captain asks the smiling, pink-cheeked Englishman as he steps onto the vessel.
For 10 straight days, Roffey, a retired customs officer and insurance agent, has ventured out to the big blue ocean with Capt. Dave’s Dolphin and Whale Safari in pursuit of the largest mammal on Earth.
Day after day, dolphins put on a show, swimming alongside the boat. Sea lions bark from their buoys. Even a few sunfish have come to the water’s surface.
Still, Roffey has been skunked. He has yet to see what he traveled more than 5,000 miles to lay his eyes on: the magnificent blue whale.
He has just two more days before he has to start for home.
Roffey has already accomplished a few goals in his life’s list of adventures. He’d seen an otter swimming in the wild in Scotland. And he has checked off his wish of seeing a Minki whale, which he saw in the Northern Sea.
But the closest Roffey has come to seeing a blue whale was an exhibit at a Natural History Museum in London, where he first learned about the creature. He originally went to see a Japanese soldier exhibit, but was mesmerized by the massive mammal.
“It just took my breath away,” he says. “It’s bigger than dinosaurs.”
“I just saw it and said ‘I’m going to see one of those things before I die’.”
Who needs Disneyland?
The migration and feeding pattern of the blue whale seems to have changed in the past few years. Decades ago, blues were rarely seen anywhere along California’s coastline. But, protected since the mid-1960s, the creatures started to be seen regularly in the 1990s in waters near Monterey and the Channel Islands.
Then, a few years ago, the pattern changed again, and the blues started to be seen near Orange County. About five years ago, word of a dozen local sightings in one season was big news. But over the past four years, local charter boats have been reporting hundreds of sightings each summer.
Biologists think a food source (blue whales typically eat krill, small fish and squid) must be nearby.
The emergence of the blue whales along the coast has created a whole new market for local charters, with several charter tour companies heading out to sea from Newport and Dana Point.
The huge (up to 110 feet long) creatures are curious and smart. They’ve been known to come up to boats and circle around for a while.
Despite the comeback locally, the massive mammal remains on the endangered species list.
Scientists estimate that before 1800s, when whalers stepped up their hunting of the blues for their oil, meat and bones, there were about 220,000 spread throughout the world’s oceans. Today, that figure is about 11,000, with about 2,000 found along our coast.
Roffey knows all this and more about the blues.
After he started doing his research on the best place to see a living, breathing, swimming blue whale, he first thought of San Pedro, and fired off an e-mail to the Los Angeles Police Department to find out how safe that area was. But before he heard back from the LAPD, he’d already stumbled upon the daily sightings logged on the Web site for Captain Dave’s Whale Watching and Dolphin Safari’s.
Mid-June, he determined, was the time he later described as “hottest” for blue whale watching.
He booked a flight to Los Angeles.
“I had no interest in that Disneyland place.”
A heart the size of a Volkswagen
Capt. Dave Anderson instructs the 50 or so people aboard to scan the horizon for a water spout or any other sign of the large creature. Everyone is looking in different directions. The only sound comes from the boat bobbing on the water’s surface.
The chances of seeing a whale are good – an earlier tour saw one, the first in weeks. But, big as the blue whale is, the ocean is bigger. It could be anywhere.
A young boy notices movement on the water and jumps up and down as he raises his hand. But it’s a false alarm – a pod of dolphins.
Capt. Dave steers the boat to see the pod. But as others on the boat seem entranced by the playful dolphins, Roffey remains focused on the sea, intense, waiting for something else to emerge.
“This is when the whale will come up, when everyone is distracted.
“It’s too quiet,” he adds. “It’s probably stalking us.”
A girl approaches. Anna Davis, 18; she’s a visitor too, from Kentucky.
“Are you the one who has been out here a bunch of times?”
Roffey nods, smiling. He’s been on the boat long enough to know the crew by name.
“Well, I hope we see one,” she says.
Roffey – wearing a green safari hat with a big camera strapped around his neck – ticks off blue whale facts like a tour guide.
“Fifty-five people can stand on the tongue,” he says. “The heart is the size of a small Volkswagen, and it can grow to 200 tons.”
Then he adds: “It’s the enormity of the thing I’m looking forward to. It’s bigger than the boat.”
After about an hour of dolphin watching, Capt. Dave asks the passengers if they’re ready to move on.
“I know there’s a man on board who wants to see the blue whale more than anyone we’ve had on this boat,” he says. “Today will be the day, I hope.”
Humpback whales. In February. In Hawaii.
Then Capt. Dave spots a “footprint,” an area of smooth water left by a whale after it has surfaced and dived back into deeper ocean. Within seconds, one of the kids yells “OH! OH! ”
“We got it,” Capt. Dave says over the speaker, yanking the boat starbord and stepping on the gas.
The boat slows when a spray of water spits into the sky. A long whale back breaks the water’s surface. It moves slowly for a few minutes, then disappears.”
Everyone on the boat cheers. Roffey points his camera, clicking.
“I’m stuck for words really,” he says. “Its back kept coming and coming. It was as if it was an endless back.”
For the next hour, the boat follows the blue whale, waiting seven minutes while the whale disappears beneath the surface, and chasing it down as it reappears.
“Don’t go dying on us now,” Capt. Dave says to Roffey, chuckling. “That right there is as good of a look as you’re gonna get of a blue whale.”
Days later, from his home, Roffey says the trip left him inspired for more.
“I’m making an actual list now, writing down the things I want to see.”
What’s next?
“Humpback whales,” he says. “In February; in Hawaii.”
By Laylan Connelly
The Orange County Register
