A first look at realism - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 37

A WHALE OF AN ENCOUNTER
One of the early tests of John Prescott's Mark II fish decompres-
sion chamber took place in 1963 at a place called Eagle Reef on
the lee side of Catalina Island. John and I were down at a depth
of around eighty feet looking for suitable specimens to collect when
all of a sudden we were startled by the presence of a huge animal.
It was a gray whale ( Eschrichtius robustus ), swimming down to-
ward us from the top of the reef ! It circled around us, then went
back up and over the reef. A few moments later it reappeared, cu-
riously looking at us. It repeated this one more time, then van-
ished once and for all.
We'd never heard of anyone seeing a whale underwater, and we
had no idea what it would do. Scared at first, we backed ourselves
up against the rocks and watched as the whale circled. I realize
now that it had never seen anything like us either and was just as
intrigued by us as we were by it. Although the whale looked huge
to us at the time, it was actually a young one of twenty feet or so.
Perhaps its mother told it to stop fooling around with us and get
back up with her.
About a year or two later I was lucky enough to run into gray
whales in the water o¤ Monterey, at a location known as the shale
beds. My dive buddy, Dennis Sullivan, and I had run low on air
and were reluctantly heading back to the surface and the boat. Re-
laxing, I was looking down toward the bottom as I slowly rose. The
water was murky, as it most often is at the shale beds. All of a sud-
den I had a strange feeling of vertigo: for a moment it looked as if
the entire bottom of the bay was moving sideways. I did a double
take, then realized that what I was seeing was two gray whales pass-
ing ten or fifteen feet beneath me. It was a mother and calf, both
rolled over and swimming on their sides, looking straight up at me.
Dennis had been looking in a totally di¤erent direction and
missed them completely. Quite skeptical of my story, he was finally
convinced—and jealous—when he saw the two whales blow once
on their way toward Monterey Harbor.