A Whale of an Encounter

A gentle giant taught me the value of staying in the present moment.

It felt like I was flying – gliding, actually – as I carefully made my way through the kelp forest, weaving and brushing past hundreds of golden-brown stalks that silently, rhythmically swayed, as if in slow motion, back and forth in the tidal surge. Other than the hiss of compressed air delivered to my scuba regulator with every inhalation, followed by the gurgling bubbles that accompanied each exhale, I inhabited a world without sound.

I glanced up for a moment, following my bubbles some 40 feet as they made their way toward the mirror-like surface, which danced in the warm glow above. My gaze shifted, following the shafts of sunlight that creased downward through the kelp forest toward the rocky reef beneath. There, a vibrant array of sheephead, blue-banded gobies, senoritas, kelp bass and, most prominently, Day-Glo-orange garibaldi darted about in the nooks and crevices, looking for a stray morsel. Other fish, seemingly more serene, schooled together by the hundreds as – like Pascal, my dive buddy, and I – they slowly slipped through this magical garden.

It was a beautiful spot, off the Laguna Beach coast, a beautiful moment in time.

Yet I wasn’t there.

More to the point, I wasn’t all there.

Sure, my body inhabited this watery Shangri-La. But my mind, and I might even venture to say my soul, was elsewhere.

Surrounded by such stunning natural beauty, my rapid-fire thoughts darted in a dozen different directions: The transportation service where I worked. Flop-sweating over the prospect of asking out a lovely young woman who clearly liked me … and who terrified me beyond comprehension. Looking for a new apartment; wondering if, for once, I’d manage to get a decent night’s sleep; mulling over the critical, life-defining difference between a sweet potato and a yam …

Pascal, who’d halted in neutral buoyancy six feet to my left, swept me back into the present, pointing to a bed of sea urchins 10 feet below. The spiny, purple invertebrates, when pried off the rocks and cracked open, were like catnip to the local denizens, creating a high-octane feeding frenzy. Fish would actually approach me the moment I unsheathed my dive knife.

I took one and cut it in half. Dozens of manic fish muscled in on the action as I fed them by hand, carefully holding the spiny urchin in my neoprene-gloved hands and thinking, If I asked her out, what’s the worst thing that’d happen? Besides, she already gave me her number, and …

… and something to my left slowly emerged into my field of vision, something much larger than the fish, the sea anemones, the rock-clinging sponges and the occasional bat ray or curious sea lion that I’d seen in my seven years playing beneath the waves.

This appeared to be about the size of a motorhome.

And it was coming my way.

Rest assured: By then, I was fully present.

The gray whale that swam up to me was about 40 feet in length. (I later learned that adult grays average 40 to 50 feet and can weigh in at more than 35 tons, about the size of 10 large elephants.) It halted, floating a few feet above the ocean floor.

If I hadn’t had a scuba regulator in my mouth, my jaw would’ve dropped. As it was, after the initial shock I felt a strange sensation, a blend of glee and terror that I haven’t felt in the 41 years since.

I obviously had no way of knowing whether or not I was the first land dweller the whale had ever seen, but to this day I remain absolutely certain that its softball-sized eyes had the look of curiosity. What’s with this four-limbed creature with all the bubbles? it seemed to project.

We stopped, the whale and I, two creatures joined together in this watery realm, and shared a magical but all-too-brief time together. I’ll never know if the behemoth was as enraptured as I felt.

And, right there, 40 feet below the surface, I found myself savoring the present moment. And it felt wonderful.

I turned to Pascal, but he was happily feeding a gaggle of fish with his own sea urchin, on the other side of a nearby rock.

When I turned back, I pondered approaching this gentle creature. Maybe it would let me rub a hand over its barnacle-encrusted skin, deepening our spontaneous bond. However, I was concerned that in doing so, I’d spook the whale, and I feared its 10-foot-long fluke would do some unintentional but serious damage if it suddenly turned to flee.

Finally, it rotated slowly, bending its massive body with more flexibility than I’d expected, and glided on into deeper water.

I frantically kicked over to Pascal, got his attention and tried to pantomime,
“A WHALE!
JUST!
SWAM!
UP TO US!”

Given my wild gesticulations, he must’ve thought I’d developed nitrogen narcosis, a danger associated with divers much deeper than we were.

Frustrated that I didn’t have a fellow human with whom to share this once-in-a-lifetime experience, I shrugged (as well as I could in a quarter-inch full-body wetsuit with a 40-pound bottle strapped to my back) and followed Pascal as he glided deeper into the kelp forest.

A few minutes later, as he turned back toward me, his body briefly jerked in shock and his arms flailed akimbo as his eyes looked at a point beyond me.

The whale had returned.

This time, it had rotated its massive bulk a quarter turn to the left, to better run his mouth through the sandy bottom. (I later learned that this is how gray whales filter feed on invertebrates.) A few moments later, while Pascal and I watched, enraptured, it turned and serenely kicked away into the murky depths forever.

As I peeled out of my wetsuit 30 minutes later, listening to Pascal as he chattered away about the experience, I thought about the brief, tranquil moment the whale and I had shared together. I wondered if, somehow, some way, its soul would remember our encounter, one I’d surely never forget.