Tele Aadsen

writer - fisherman - listener

Cap’n J and I spent the past 12 days chas­ing coho. They’re always on the move, search­ing for a steady food source, and they trav­el incog­ni­to, invis­i­ble to our above-water exis­tence. But the meal plan they’re look­ing for, from tiny shrimp-like krill to mas­sive schools of her­ring, is equal­ly as com­pelling to oth­er crea­tures.  Whales, sea lions, por­pois­es, div­ing birds, gulls, puffins; the oxy­gen-depen­dent are our indi­ca­tors of the rich­ness of a par­tic­u­lar place. They reveal the pres­ence of our tar­get species as effec­tive­ly as a Hide-and-Seek play­er with a bad case of the hic­cups. As one of our fish­ing part­ners says about these spots, “Lot­ta good gro­ceries here,” and all of the ocean dwellers shop at the same store.

Some trav­el great dis­tances to find these par­tic­u­lar gro­ceries. South­east Alas­ka is the sum­mer get­away for thou­sands of hump­back whales. They cruise up for months of easy feed­ing, bulk up their blub­ber, and then head south for win­ter breed­ing off the coasts of Hawaii and Mex­i­co. A sched­ule not unlike many fishermen.

In our island com­mu­ni­ties, where humans always have one foot in the sea, hump­backs are wel­come sea­son­al res­i­dents. Each as indi­vid­u­al­ly dis­tinct and rec­og­niz­able as a Down South-based boat pulling back through the break­wa­ter: I see so-and-so’s back in town. The first spouts on the hori­zon whoosh assur­ance that sum­mer is actu­al­ly on its way, while the final arch­ing tails heave good­byes like great sighs of relief.  Their role in our com­mu­ni­ty is hon­ored with November’s annu­al Whale­fest, now on its fif­teenth year. Renowned whale biol­o­gist Jan Stra­ley lives here, keep­ing South­east at the fore­front of cetacean study. We’ve got the Sit­ka Sound Sci­ence Cen­ter.  There’s a fan­tas­tic web­site of hump­back info, thanks to all of this local exper­tise and research, here. Sitkans are seri­ous about whales.

The Nation­al Marine Fish­eries Ser­vice (NMFS) has man­dat­ed that all ves­sels main­tain a 100 yard dis­tance from whales. A good rule for safe view­ing, these reg­u­la­tions are in everyone’s best inter­est – theirs and ours. Life gets a lit­tle too excit­ing some­times, when the crea­tures under pro­tec­tion aren’t inter­est­ed in main­tain­ing that dis­tance. Grace­ful, bril­liant, con­fi­dent, curi­ous, and so much more belong­ing to the envi­ron­ment than us, they seem utter­ly uncon­cerned with our presence.

I can’t explain the unusu­al attrac­tion hump­backs have for us. Maybe it’s our sim­i­lar size – our 43 foot ves­sel is right there with their 39 to 52 foot length.  The Ner­ka is a dou­ble-ender, pointy V‑shaped ends at both bow and stern, and maybe they like our curves. Could be that the red of our bot­tom paint is espe­cial­ly provoca­tive.  I can’t explain the attrac­tion, but it’s real: I’ve had far more close encoun­ters in the 6 years I’ve been on the Ner­ka, than on 16 years’ of pre­vi­ous boat experience.

Most encoun­ters are benign. Sev­er­al might pace us as we troll along at 2.5 knots, spout­ing 50 feet off the side, lol­ly­gag­ging on the sur­face to study us. Oth­ers breach in the sun, fling­ing their 40 ton bulk out of the water far enough away to be breath­tak­ing rather than ter­ri­fy­ing, close enough that their land­ing cracks like can­non fire. Nine­ty-nine per­cent of the time, the worst con­se­quence of our inter­ac­tions is the impact on my pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Tough to keep on task, gaze locked down into the fish you’re gut­ting, when in the midst of your own pri­vate Nation­al Geo­graph­ic special.

Cap’n J and I were on our way South sev­er­al years ago, the salmon sea­son behind us and just a few days’ out of Belling­ham. A per­fect­ly still after­noon of glassy water and late Sep­tem­ber sun, I’d been on the wheel while he slept. He woke up, joined me in the cab­in, bleary-eyed over a warmed-up plate of spaghet­ti. I chat­tered about how unevent­ful my watch had been. The Ner­ka cruised along at 7 knots, when an unspeak­ably large black mass broke the blue direct­ly below my port helm win­dow. Time stopped. A deaf­en­ing exha­la­tion, whale air sprayed the glass. (What kind of clean­ing spray would you use to remove whale snot?) Our bow rose sev­er­al feet and rolled starboard.

That time, I respond­ed prop­er­ly. Yanked the throt­tle down and threw the boat into neu­tral. The whale sub­merged, still so slow and calm, gen­tly return­ing the Ner­ka to her even keel. The del­i­cate quiver in Bear’s water dish was the only indi­ca­tor of the dis­rup­tion. Even­tu­al­ly I stopped trem­bling, and we watched our friend spout casu­al­ly behind the boat, an itch hope­ful­ly relieved from his impromp­tu back scratch.

Oth­er times, our minds fail in moments of crit­i­cal impact.  On this last trip, we were sur­round­ed by dai­ly whale activ­i­ty. One day, it was far too close.

We’d had a good day. Found some coho, kept busy enough that it was a throw-some­thing-frozen-into-the-oven night, rather than tak­ing the time for a pre­pared din­ner. I’d rushed into the gal­ley, still in my drip­ping rain­pants while study­ing the direc­tions on a lasagna, when I heard Joel yelling from the cockpit.

Holy shit!”

What?” I hollered back.

He point­ed a rub­ber gloved hand ahead. “It’s right there!”

I grabbed the cam­era and jumped into the pilot seat. Sure enough, there was a whale direct­ly off our port bow, its broad back split­ting the sea with­in spit­ting dis­tance. My heart was already beat­ing over­time, when a flick­er of motion pulled my atten­tion to our anchor. This is the video from that encounter.

(Salty lan­guage in this one. Entire­ly appro­pri­ate to the cir­cum­stances, I think you’ll agree, but depend­ing on where you’re view­ing this and who’s around, you might turn the vol­ume down.)

You can see I didn’t han­dle this one prop­er­ly. So unglued by what seemed like inevitable col­li­sion, I com­plete­ly for­got that the Nerka’s shifter, gears I’ve han­dled hun­dreds of times, were imme­di­ate­ly with­in reach. “Fuck­ing neu­tral” was about six inch­es from my right hand. And Cap’n J will tell you that he’s nev­er heard that par­tic­u­lar tone in my voice before. But once again, we all got lucky. They went about their day, per­haps a bit irri­tat­ed by their over­ly-crowd­ed water­way, maybe grum­bling to each oth­er about tourists who don’t know how to dri­ve.  It took quite a bit longer for my legs to become sol­id again.