Gray Whale 3/8/25
My first Gray Whale photos of the season! I had seen a couple Gray Whales a few weeks ago but was unable to get photos. This time I was able to get a few. I was at Ft Funston looking for Gray Whales and Bottlenose Dolphins. The heat distortion was starting to get pretty bad so I was about to hike down closer to beach level to reduce the amount of warm land between me and the ocean. Then I got a call from Chris who said, “Did you see Heather’s post?” I said I hadn’t, and he informed me that she had seen some spouts near Mussel Rock about 20 minutes earlier, so they might be headed my way.
Sure enough, I scanned the area down to Mussel Rock and was able to locate one whale. I debated whether to still try and go down closer to the beach because getting shots from my location was going to be hard with the distortion. But I was afraid I wouldn’t get down in time and would miss it, so I went with my core philosophy: “First get something, then try and get something better.”
Every time the whale surfaced, I fired away with long bursts hoping that at least one of the shots in the bunch would catch a pocket of clear air. That strategy ended up working, and even though nearly 99/100 shots were blurry, with 400 shots I managed to get four that weren’t too bad. Even better I managed to get a fluke, which I don’t get very often with the Gray Whales around here.
A very happy day!
