One of the Biggest
Tully Rohrer
January 23rd, 2008
I’m aware that these images, from the point of view of an artist, leave, well, pretty much everything to be desired. However, I have been so incredibly busy as of late - I’ve had ONE full day off of work in the last three weeks - that I’ve barely had the time to think, let alone take pictures. The one day I did have off, I unwound by going out in a boat looking for charismatic megafauna… and, boy, did we find some.
These shots are of a small family of fin whales. By small, I mean that there were four individuals - because I certainly don’t mean small in terms of size. In fact, the fin whale holds the title of second largest animal on the planet - and the momma whale of this family was around 70 feet by our best guess. 70 FEET!!!! It was absolutely mind blowing how large these creatures were. We would try to guess where they would surface from their 4-5 minute dives, and then shut off the engine. Even when we guessed poorly and were a 1/4 mile off, their individual breaths were loud enough to startle us. In addition to viewing them swim, we also got to see them lunge feed for krill at the surface - the last image in the sequence shows half the fluke up in the air as they lunged sideways to feed. 70 FREAKING FEET!!! Shoot me in the head if I ever get tired of seeing whales.
That is absolutely incredible! I really have to envy your life sometimes because you get to experience amazing things like this. Then again, you only get one day off in a three week stretch.
hahahaha, i love the 70 FREAKING FEET!
well anyway, tully, i miss catalina. i don’t know if you still remember me? but i was with chaparral. our 7th grade is going to catalina but i’m not sure if they are going to the same campsite, HA!
this is mesmerizing, we went to yosemite this year, but i just think catalina dominates my favorite trip. i might just be an ocean person.
well it must be beautiful right now, i miss you!
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you downplay the artistic merits of these photos, but the third one from the top is freaking unbelievable from an artistic point of view. the whale is just a big amorphous blob with one tiny little fin sticking out at an odd angle that is creating a large disturbance in the normally placid water. i wish the houses in the distance weren’t quite so fuzzy looking, but if it’s haze then you can’t really do anything about that.