Whale Watching Made Fun

It is a peculiarly Southern California phenomenon that one can whale watch from a moving vehicle along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, especially the stretch between Guernsey Avenue and Busch Drive, which affords a wide unbroken view of Zuma Beach. The whale mamas and their calves, returning to the Bering Sea from their winter home in the Baja Lagoon, tend to swim very close to shore, and I’ve found from March through May is really the most ideal time to spot the California Gray Whale.

Curious calves often spy-hop—rise vertically out of the water to have a look around—and I’ve seen others breach (leap into the air then splash back down sideways) or roll and frolic just a few yards off the beach. (As most Zuma beachgoers know, there’s an abrupt drop-off to deep water, so the whales, while appearing close in, are very unlikely to wind up getting stranded in shallow water.)

Peculiar perhaps to Southern California also, or maybe it’s just Malibu beaches, is a lot of stuff going on that can distract a diehard whale watcher, plus just typical dumb bunny stuff. Like the time I forgot to load the camera and a gray whale calf was so close it seemed like I could have fed him a sardine from my outstretched hand. Or the time I failed to remove the lens cover from the camera before swinging it into position for a once-in-a-lifetime shot. Now I pass people on the beach who get Pulitzer Prize-winning shots using their picture phones while simultaneously providing a running narrative to their cousins in Piscataway, New Jersey.

There’s this grand little place called Pirate’s Cove that’s at the base of the Point Dume Headlands and can only be accessed by the limber-legged unafraid of clambering over some very craggy boulders. Pirate’s Cove used to have what was once quaintly called a reputation, as in, people who did not like to wear swimsuits or anything else and maybe also liked to pursue amour a la Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in that famous frothy scene in From Here to Eternity would flock there. It’s a dramatic little cove, backed by rugged crumbling bluffs and with waves smashing into sea stacks just offshore and sea lions barking from the buoy they enjoy hanging out on.

One afternoon I was following a whale who was going back and forth a lot, and on this sally he was moving from Westward Beach towards Pirate’s Cove so I scrambled to follow. It was a blustery day and I was swaddled in winter clothes and a hooded windbreaker. I did my mountain goat routine and made it over the rocks without breaking my neck, which was not easy since all the while my eyes were following the whale’s progress.

Suddenly somebody yelled Cut! which drew my attention inland a moment. There on the beach were three near-naked girls standing before a big white reflective board and a silver umbrella while a very well bundled-up all-male film crew kept goading, More cheesecake, baby! as they filmed what appeared to be a beer commercial. The passing whale spouted, exhaling a geyser like Old Faithful, and the girls screamed and ran for cover like it was the whale that swallowed Jonah coming to make morsels of them. They dropped the beer bottles they’d been holding. I was tempted to pick one up, empty it, scribble a note to the whale, And humans insist they’re the superior race, and lob it out on a wave.

At the nice whale watch station the state parks people constructed a few years ago on the Point Dume Headlands there are benches to rest on if there’s a lull between sightings. This can be a ferociously windy spot, and a luckless spot until the return migration when the whales often appear as if they know this is their stage. They’ll wallow amid the kelp, doing rolls, eliciting squeals and oohs and ahs from those watching. It’s a good place for picture-taking and binoculars are almost unnecessary but will lend a real IMAX touch.

Dogs are forbidden on the Headlands, which is the rule on state park trails plus this is considered a very sensitive and fragile habitat undergoing restoration. However, in my years of living in Malibu this has never stopped any local dog owners who perhaps feel Fido is every bit as entitled to whale watch as the rest of us. So I can say I’ve gone whale watching with Germaine and Giselle, a matched pair of Bouvier de Flandres dogs; and Cassius the bull-mastiff standing on his hind legs drooled his approval parked next to me at the railing of the whale watch station. And Freja the Basenji (these dogs at least can’t bark so don’t disturb the whales) and Roscoe the Rottweiler who can bark and did so vociferously.

If I could handle seasickness maybe I’d take one of those guided boat tours out towards the Channel Islands. I’d have my head inside a barf bag most of the way, but aside from that inconvenience might get the chance to commune with the whales minus the live nude girls, picture phones and canine accompaniment.

From 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sun., March 7, visit the eighth annual Whale Festival at Point Mugu State Park, Sycamore Cove; call (805) 488-1827.