Thar she blows!

The whales are back. I saw the boats before I saw the beasts: the harbor cruises all making a quick buck by never even having to venture out to sea to satisfy the looky-lous. I knew by the way the boats were just sitting there, inside the jetty, that the grays were on their migration back north, mothers and calfs and yearlings ducking into the relatively safe harbor of the port of Los Angeles to escape orcas, find some shallow grub, and scrape off a few barnacles. Sure enough, a heart-shaped wisp appeared in between two power boats. Thar she blows.

There were hundreds of birds on the breakwater near the Angels Gate lighthouse.

It’s a thrill to see a whale up close. I’m as guilty of enjoying it as anyone. I was out there Sunday morning, right where the tour boats had been. Only I maintain a respectful distance in my kayak — 100 yards is the law — with no noisy engine or toxic fumes disturbing the environment. You really don’t have to chase them: If you are patient and calm, they will probably, eventually come to you.

That happened Sunday. I got there early and paddled out alone, stopping to photograph birds on buoys, to sip my coffee and pour a ceremonial cetacean offering in the bay. I saw blows pretty much right away, but I also saw the paddleboarders and boats that were already crowding the whales. So I stayed in my lane, aiming toward the lighthouse. Pausing in the middle to see if my friend Laurie was catching up, I heard it: the exhale of a whale surfacing to breathe. It was a few hundred feet to the north, but I could see its white back. Immediately I heard another blow, the same distance south. Their surfacing seemed so timed I assumed they were traveling together, probably a mother and child. They passed on either side, heading inland, and I kept paddling toward  the ocean.

Laurie caught up with me just before the lighthouse, right after a third whale surfaced in front of us. She doesn’t believe in stopping for whales, and I followed her to the open water, where it was suprisingly calm, more so than in San Pedro Bay. Maybe we should have kayaked on the outside, I thought. But ironically, it’s a lot harder to see a whale out here in the wild than in one of the world’s busiest harbors, at least in the spring.

We had just started paddling back when a whale surfaced in front of a nearby fishing boat. We stopped, and I managed to shoot it in slow motion on my iPhone, though we were too far away for a clear image. It dove, and we stayed motionless, drifting slowly in with the current. They can’t go very deep in the shallow bay so they usually don’t stay under long, unless they are running away.

I was sitting with my camera ready when suddenly the water bubbled a few yards in front of me, and I was looking right at a baby gray whale. It was so close that I had to drop the phone in my lap and paddle backwards so as not to drift over it. I brake for whales. It lay on the surface in front of me, a perfect recently born calf, white as a sheet. Then it bowed its head, diving down again, giving me a full body view from baleen to fluke. I was giddy with laughter, stoned on cetacean: it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen, and I feel like it came to me, checked me out, and went on its way — I did not give chase.

It surfaced a couple more times, close but not that close. Laurie had paddled away, surfing the wake of a passing boat in her slender sit-inside kayak. She does not like to get close to the whales and feels like we are intruding on them. I respect her opinion, especially since she is a first-nation American. But I feel differently. These whales choose a busy harbor for their day care center and rest area. They are clearly curious about humans — I’ve had several close encounters in the the three years they’ve been visiting San Pedro Bay — and I think we should treat them as old friends who are returning to waters that were once full of whales, before human hunters wiped them out. I think we should welcome them back, give them their space, and help and protect them. Don’t run toward them, but don’t run from them either.

I have heard different versions of why they have been coming to the harbor the last three years: there has been extensive pollution mitigation there and they may feel like it is safer than it was for decades. They may also be starving and looking for food; they have appeared emaciated, and some were found dead in the unusual mortality event of 2019. But I also know that scientists have observed some of the same whales from previous years returning. So when I see them, I like to think of them as old friends. Sharing the water with these magnificent, gentle creatures, as we must share the planet, never gets old.

 

 

To the Lighthouse

Angels Gate Lighthouse. Photo by Heidi Tinsman

I like to experience the sea from multiple planes. Diving in, I visit a hidden world, where humans are guests and the life forms more fantastic the deeper one plunges. Swimming on the surface, my view is the point where water meets air, which I share with paddling birds, frolicking dolphins and the occasional curious pinniped. Standing on a paddleboard, I can gaze down into the ocean and watch those same creatures as they dive underneath me, or I can look far to the horizon to where the cerulean earth bends out of sight. Sitting in a kayak, I’m on the water but not in it, at sea level but dry. By kayak, I can cover more miles more quickly than by other routes. Saturday, I paddled to the lighthouse.

As my friend Heidi and I pulled our boats into San Pedro Bay at the Cabrillo Beach boat ramp, an osprey wheeled overhead. I took it as an auspicious sign, pun intended. These brown and white hunters are my favorite birds primarily because, like me, they love the water. There’s one, and sometimes two, that hang out near the ramp, perhaps hoping for catch dropped by fishermen. They also like to patrol the inner curve of the outer beach, right outside my windows. I love to watch them hover in place, their wings cupping the air, meaty legs aimed toward potential prey – treading air like we tread water. Their dive is quick and sudden; its force can take them all the way below the surface. Sometimes I see them fly by with fish dangling from their talons, bringing home the bacon, so to speak. This is another thing I like about osprey; they are pescatarians. They basically just eat fish, sometimes a frog or eel that maybe they mistook for a trout. So even though this osprey is circling over a flock of coots and scooters, unlike an eagle, it’s not hunting other birds; it wants what they want – fish.

There’s a slight chop on the water, so we’re unsure how far we should go. We head toward the Lane Victory, the merchant marine vessel docked at the entrance to the main channel into the port. Just off the pilings, a sea lion is repeatedly jumping in circles through the water, like a cat chasing its tail.

There’s no wind or current and the waves are harmless, so we decide to cross the bay to the harbor entrance. “To the lighthouse!” we two feminist professors exclaim, and giggle at our literary joke.

Angels Gate Light has marked the entrance to the City of Angels for 113 years. Perched on the end of the rock jetty that protects Los Angeles Harbor, it’s an elegant black and white building that was refurbished several years ago. On this day, after the rains have rinsed the air, it seems to positively gleam against the blue sky and water. Also known as the Los Angeles Harbor Lighthouse, its light and horn keep the giant cargo ships from running into the jetty. For them, it marks the entrance to the port; for Heidi and me, it’s the exit to the open sea.

We paddle past the lighthouse into the Pacific, just for a look. The waves are still big out here. To our left the ocean is a parking lot of cargo ships waiting for a port berth. COVID infections and restrictions have slowed the unloading process on the docks, and record numbers of ships have been left waiting. A couple weeks ago 55 of these giant container ships had to navigate 17-foot waves. Please politicians, give essential workers their vaccines.

Staring straight south it’s nothing but blue on blue. There’s something about looking out on the ocean from the edge of land that opens a person up – especially after months of limited mobility, of sheltering in place, of lockdown. The options are endless here; it’s the “sea of possibilities,” as Patti Smith sang on the song called “Land.”

Then a fishing boat comes racing in from the ocean, passing too close and too fast. Behind us, a majestic wooden ship, the Zapata II, has all its sails flying and is coming up remarkably quick. I paddle back to the lighthouse to get out of the way, but the wakes from the two vessels merge around me and suddenly I’m pitching up and down, waves breaking over my bow, feeling like a very small vessel in a very busy urban port.

Back in the bay and, literally, even keeled, we take one last look around before retracing our, er, steps. The view from the kayak is like being in the bottom of a landscape painting. To the east, the mountains are dressed in a thick layer of snow. The white triangular arches of the new Gerald Desmond Bridge that connects Los Angeles to Long Beach are architectural echoes of Big Bear. Below them the red and white cranes of the loading docks also reach to the sky. We’re sitting in the ocean, looking up at snow-covered mountains and the engineering marvels of one of the world’s busiest ports.

I love LA.

No Mercy

USS Mercy leaves Port of LA

We watched her sail in and we watched her sail out. The USS Mercy Hospital Ship left Los Angeles today after almost seven weeks. I’m glad she was here, and I’m even happier to see that she is no longer needed.

When the Navy ship arrived March 24, California was in early pandemic panic. Five days earlier Governor Newsom had predicted 25 million Covid-19 cases in the state by May if aggressive measures were not taken. Instead, we are just shy of 75,000 confirmed cases today. Granted, aggressive measures were and are being taken, and that has undoubtedly saved many lives. Still, the hyperbole of Newsom’s prediction has helped fan the fires of virus disbelievers.

Better safe than sorry, sure. Almost everyone welcomed the Mercy as a symbol of hope and unity, of state and federal governments working together — well, except for the nutball train engineer who tried to ram it. This is an unfortunate byproduct of overheated rhetoric: conspiracy theorists will run the train of misinformation right off the track.

In the end the 1,500-bed life saver treated 77 patients. She was more of a tourist attraction than a facility. But we were honored to welcome her to San Pedro, and no offense sailors, but we hope we don’t have to see you again.

The USS Mercy passes through Angel’s Gate into LA.

 

Let us exercise our right to exercise

The Argonaut, a weekly newspaper serving the west side of Los Angeles, asked to republish my Blue Wave blog post calling for open spaces to be, well, open. I updated and expanded it for them. Since press time, Los Angeles announced it would reopen most trails today (Saturday), and beaches might reopen mid-week — with most of the precautions and restrictions I suggest. Here in San Pedro though, many parks were still closed this morning, perhaps because some of them are run by the Port of Los Angeles; thanks Port for polluting our air and restricting our movement. Neither Mayor Garcetti nor our City Council representative Joe Buscaino have responded to my requests for explanation as to why so many of our neighborhood parks — which were always supposed to be open for exercise — have been closed.

Gray Days

Photo by Tim Maxeiner

The news of Space X building its big effing rocket in San Pedro has gone national, global even. It, along with some hot property deals, also led to the predictable headlines about an “upturn for San Pedro.” Maybe, maybe not. As “Marina del Pedro,” an info-rich exhibit currently at the Angels Gate Cultural Center, shows, the efforts to develop this community are as old as the port itself. Curator and artist Tim Maxeiner (discloser: he’s a friend) turned to both historical archives and the contemporary local community to tell the tale of the Port of Los Angeles’s push and pull relationship to nature, industry, people, and business. The German-born egalitarian pulls work from both teens he taught at the Boys and Girls Club and such local artists as Phoebe Barnum and Beth Elliott. I even wrote an essay for it, about waterfront adventures in this whale of a town. The exhibit closes Saturday, with festivities from 3 to 6 p.m. Below is my essay, which will also be in the catalog, available this weekend.

Gray Days

By Evelyn McDonnell

I live on the edge of a forest. It’s five acres large, a potential home to 700 species, and it thrives in winter, when its trunks and leaves stretch high to the sky, swaying back and forth in the ocean currents. Animals feed and hide here in the Giant Kelp: mammals as big as you, who will swim up to your kayak and look you straight in the eye or roll in the water underneath, showing off, or maybe even nursing their young. Schools of fish — sardines or Spanish mackerels — flash silver in the sun, and bright orange garibaldi dart nervously around rock outcroppings, having been pushed out of their nests by crustacean bullies: armored lobsters and their sideway cousins, the crabs.

I live next to one of the busiest ports in the world. Ships laden with containers slip in and out of Angels Gate, like multi-colored skyscrapers moving sideways across the sea. Towering cranes await them, a forest of metal redwoods silhouetted against the mountains, ready to pluck the rectangular boxes off the cargo decks like so many toothpicks hundreds of feet in the air, then stack them neatly on the dock, where they’ll continue their voyage via trains, or trucks — the atoms of the neoliberal capitalist organism continuing their global orbit. Refineries belch smoke in the background, processing the crude black oil pumped up from the bottom of the ocean by the rigs that loom like watchtowers on the southern most edge of my view — the rigs are the south poles, the refineries the north. Between them lie the kelp and the commerce, the dolphins and the dock workers, the whales and the freighters — the urban wild landscape of San Pedro, my adopted home.