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And so, floating in my kayak, assailed by a chorus of bellowing grunts sounding from throats large enough, it seemed, to swallow me in a few gulps, I find myself singing back. Although not, this time, in a particularly mellifluous tone. If I had offered a gentle, calm note, the sea lions would never have heard me through the clamor of their own growling, and in any case I could never have generated such a soothing tone from within my already freaked-out organism. Instead, the musical tone that I utter forth is as loud and as guttural as I can manage, with my head thrown back in order to open my throat – a kind of low-pitched, gargling howl: “Aaarrrrrrggghhhh…, Aaaaarrrggghhhh…, Aaaarrrrggghhhh…” I hold each guttural howl for as long as I can, finally pausing to draw a deep breath, at which point I notice, amazed, that the sea lions have stopped growling. I lower my head to look at them; they’re now sniffing the air toward me, shoving one another to get a better glimpse of this large, brightly colored duck that can make such an ugly racket. My ears pick up the sound of fifty or sixty noses snorting and snorfling (and sometimes sneezing) as they sniff the breeze. My own nostrils can hardly sort the thickly mingled scents of salt spray and sea lion breath and the dense, floating beds of kelp as I take up the paddle and begin, like a fool, paddling closer. My own creaturely curiosity has gotten the better of my reason; I cannot help myself, enthralled by my proximity to these breathing bodies so weirdly akin to, and yet so different from, my own. The smell of them grows steadily stronger as I ease my kayak between the strands of kelp. When I get within about twenty-five feet of the rocks, that large male on the lower ledge – the same bull who initiated the alarm the first time – lifts his torso up on his flippers and starts bellowing. Straightaway a few others join in, and by the time I’ve laid the paddle across the kayak nearly all of the sea lions are hollering bloody murder. And so I am gulping air and mustering myself and about to launch into my own guttural harangue when, directly between me and the sea lions, the water’s surface begins to bubble. Small bubbles at first, which soon give way to larger ones, and then a huge upwelling of water as, without any further warning, a gargantuan body blasts! Through the surface into the sky – flying on outstretched wings that, as I stare wide-eyed, resolve themselves into the splayed pectoral fins of a humpback whale.
The whale twists almost belly side up before its bulk crashes down, drenching me with spray and sending a huge wave rolling over the hull of the kayak, slamming the paddle against my life jacket and almost sweeping it away before I catch hold of its end and drag it back. In front of the kayak, the long, pleated folds of the humpback’s underside are slipping slowly beneath the surface… and then the whale is gone.
I grab the paddle and desperately begin to back-paddle, thinking that the giant may try to capsize me, although after a few moments I realize that I’ve no idea what the whale is up to, or where in the depths it might now be. So I brace the paddle across the hull, gripping it tight with both hands, and simply wait. After a minute I hear the pip, pip, pip of tiny bubbles breaking, and by the time I locate them the water to my left begins boiling and then upwelling, and before I can prepare myself that massive bulk explodes through the surface like a fever –mad hallucination – barely eight feet from the kayak – right side up this time and parallel to the boat although lunging in the opposite direction, immense pectoral fins dangling before it slams down. The swell catches my boat sideways and damn near flips me over, except that I counter-lean hard to the left, rocking back up in time to glimpse an incongruously small, almost human-like eye peering at me as it glides just above the waterline. The whale spouts, and a breeze blows its exhaled spray into my face, drenching my already sopped body, and then I’m overcome by the rousing stench of its breath. “Sewage - like,” I think at first, but then it occurs to me, “What a blessing to inhale the breath of a humpback whale!” The smell’s intensity is jangling my neurons as the enormous apparition slides back down, leaving only a slim dorsal fin visible for a last moment before it vanishes beneath the surface.