o-Pod
Big pod of Saddleback Dolphins, about a mile off Santa Monica Pier
I’ve been out in the Pacific in my little Boston Whaler dozens of times, and at every time of the year, but I’ve never seen it as deserted of boats as today.
It’s no surprise, since the average member of the Mosquito Fleet goes out in something at least 20 feet long, with twin whatevers that suck down the gas. Or diesel. Plus, gas in the marina costs almost 7 bucks a gallon (they pay all sorts of fees to be able to spill gas into the harbor) and you’ve got an industry suffering from the gas crunch.
I’m glad I bought the 4-stroke Mercury 60 for the Whaler. I did it for the environmentally friendly side first, but now that gas is so expensive, it’s cheap to run. Where my old 2-stroke Evinrude took down 18 gallons in about 3 hours, this thing can go at least 10 without getting down to a quarter tank. I took it to Catalina with Dash 2 years ago, we fished, then cruised around the whole island before returning to the Marina, and we hadn’t quite used a third of a tank.
There’s a drawback to not having any boaters out there: you can’t get in their chumline, look for bent poles, or otherwise cheat at finding the fish by finding the happy fishermen. Oh sure, there are the party boats, but they always go to the same spots, and the likelihood of being blown into their lines or getting crapped on by the army of seagulls (would that be “Airforce of Seagulls?”) is way too high. Plus, you get your own boat to get away from the party boats.
Today was my shakedown cruise for the start of the summer. The kids are at camp, the wife is visiting her girlfriends — what better time for a man to face off against the elements by going 40 miles per hour in the wide Pacific? I dropped the wife off at the airport, drove to the Marina, put the battery in the boat and backed it down the ramp.
Leave it to Mercury — everything started up and worked perfectly. I put up the canopy, raised the antenna, fired up the fishfinder (a gift from my pal Sam) and the ship-to-shore and steamed out through the no-wake zone. I just wanted to make sure everything was working before bringing kids and fishing poles and the like.
But once I got out to open water, I had to fire it up. It was pretty choppy this morning, and I got airborne more than once, but I won’t be feeling those injuries to my neck and spine for a few days. And as I was out there, all alone, I noticed a big commotion of birds, maybe two miles off the Santa Monica Pier.
So I went. I was hoping it wasn’t harbor seals gnawing at something under a kelp island. I used to love seeing them, but they are so brazen, and have eaten so many anchovies off my line, I don’t need to burn any gas just to get snorted at. Plus they’re always easy to find lolling on the buoys. The homeless people of the sea.
But I was in luck. The birds weren’t just dropping in from high up like they do with a few seals. They were hovering just above the water, picking up scrap after scrap. And there were thousands.
I raced around the big pack of birds to the head of the line, and there in the splashes I could see hundreds of saddleback dolphins, racing and hunting all in a north to northwest direction. At this point in the bay, the warmer water from inshore forms a line that washes out and south with the current — you can see it just as you take off from LAX, especially if there is any rain runoff — and the dolphins hunt in giant packs, pushing the baitfish in the warm water up against the colder current further out to sea.
The baitfish don’t like this — a small but sudden temperature change can shock them and cause temporary paralysis, so the first ones to hit that line double back against the feeding dolphins, making a hell of a mess. As I sat there idling, cursing the fact that I had lent my wife my camera and trying to figure out the zoom on my Blackberry, a huge school of anchovies boiled to the surface around my boat, and I was surrounded by furiously feeding dolphins, jumping, diving, snorting air, making impossible moves on their backs and going fast, fast, fast — I could feel a vibration under my feet like a rope singing in a stiff breeze — and I couldn’t help thinking of these little guys (the saddlebacks are about half the length of a bottle-nose) as lovable, friendly piranhas.
Then Crap Force One caught up, and I got out of there, taking the above photo as I went.
As I left, a number of dolphins escorted the boat, leaping out of the water and having a good look at me. I can’t help think that they are more curious than most people I’ve met in my work. Especially the Jaywalkers.
