Riding Gray Whales in the 1960s

Terry Garrett is now a local diver who has been lucky enough to hear the call of mother ocean, and sail it since he was three feet tall.

This is a personal story of ‘innocent abuse’ done by humans to another species in the past that resulted in state, as well as federal laws, to protect marine life.

I grew up in San Diego in the 1960s. By 1969 I was beginning to become a beach ‘regular’ (Okay, bum in training) and a skin/scuba diver in earnest. Almost all free moments were spent at, or in, the ocean. My other hangout was the dive store in La Jolla.

Dropping by the dive store that fall to see ‘what’s happening’ I was told that the underwater visibility was pretty bad and not expected to get better for a few days even though the surf was down. I asked one of the store workers what activities might be going on.

“We’re going out off OB (Ocean Beach) tomorrow to ride the gray whales,” he replied.

“What??” I looked at him closely to see if he was joking. The look was calm, serious—not a joke in it.

“Tomorrow morning a couple of us are going out to ride the whales. Want to come along?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, not really sure if this was something I wanted to do or not. “How do you do that?”

“You’ll have to use a different mask than the one you normally use. As the whale takes off, there is usually a large wave that rushes over you until you get some speed up and rise out of the water, like a real slow wave. But you can’t hold onto your mask. If you let go of the whale you’ll probably fall off. Sometimes they just sound, and then you’ve got to jump off anyway,” he said.

‘Get some speed up? Rising out of the water??’ My mind was reeling with the exciting possibilities. This was sounding like it could be fun! I was 16 years old and jumping on the back of a whale as it cruised by our coast seemed as normal as about anything else going on at that point in my life. “So what do you hold onto?” I asked.

He grinned. “Well, nothing and everything. You know how they have barnacles growing all over their backs?” I nodded in the affirmative. “Because of the barnacles, your wetsuit will just about stick to them anyway, but it is a good idea to just sort of lay prone, at least at first, and try to get a grip with your gloved hands too,” he said.

“Okay, set me up with a slim mask. Where do we meet and when?” I asked.

He sold me the mask, gave me the scoop on the rest of the details and I found myself the next morning getting into a rubber boat with three other ‘riders’ joining another boat with three more.

It’s an extremely foggy, misty morning—the usual for the beach area in the fall. The swell is gently rolling, with the surf breaking at a small one to three feet. We head out through the channel from Mission Bay into the ocean. I’m excited, but at the same time a little scared. Three of us seven ‘riders’ have never done this before. That makes me feel a little better. One in the other boat is a woman, which gives my developing male ego a push to exert its self and at least not to appear like I’m afraid and ready to swim back to land.

“So, just how do we do this?” one of the other whale-riding rookies asked. I was happy about this, as he was a college student and I was able to blow a bit more air into my high school ego, at the same time opening my ears way up and leaning forward so as to not miss a word that might save my life.

“Nothing to it,” says Fred, the dive shop salesman. “We just get into the path they are traveling in and when they are on the surface we cruise up and somebody hops on.”

That seems easy enough, I think. Twenty tons of live, wild animal is minding its own business, just swimming along, and a little person weighing less than 150 pounds just jumps on its back. No problem. Right!!

Charlie, the store manager, is first and he’s done this before. We spot a pod a little further out and signal the other boat. Both head that way. I look at Charlie and am surprised to see a smile on his face like he’s looking forward to something fun, nothing like the death toll I’m beginning to hear in my head. It looks like there are four or five whales traveling together, and the two boats are in a direct line in front of where they’re heading.

Now Charlie puts his gloves on, zips his wet suit all the way up and tightens his slim mask another notch as he looks over the side. “On the left! On the left!” Fred’s almost yelling with excitement filling his voice.

About six feet away, one to two feet underwater, is a large gray, barnacle-covered ‘carpet’ moving by swiftly. Charlie lunges out of the boat and manages to close the gap in his leap. He is astride, and then leaning forward, as the whale/carpet comes partially to the surface.

There is a whoosh sound, and a spray of water and air that smells kind of fishy directly in front of us as Charlie suddenly looks like a toy in the bathtub that you’ve gripped and are swishing through the water, only Charlie is a lot bigger, going faster and further. In what seems like just a moment, Fred fires up the motor and we are on our way to pick up Charlie; he’s about a half a block away, and apparently by himself now.

“Short ride, short ride,” he says as we help him back aboard. He is grinning from ear to ear. “I think that was a teenager and it got the word from Mom or Dad to sound after we took off for only a minute.” He was breathless, but unharmed. Maybe I can do this.

If you have ever stood in line at the high-dive while young and afraid, but not about to pass at your chance to be really scared, then you know what it was like, times 10, being in that boat waiting for my turn.

After my college-bound boat-mate got his chance, it was my turn. I remember thinking ‘This is crazy’ as I watched him clinging on to that barnacle-covered gray carpet that’s representative of the largest animal on earth. His ride was a series of in-and-out-of-the-water dunkings that went for about a city block. Then man and beast separated.

As we approach, I note that his mask is askew and now his once clear eyes are rimmed in red—from crying in terror? Or just the salt water?...I don’t have the guts to ask. He seems fine and is laughing and grinning once back aboard. I know of the relief that can come when you think you might have just escaped with your life; he isn’t fooling me.

Okay, my turn. The other boat whistles to us and points out a little further where they could see a pod moving our way as they crest the gently rolling swells. Both boats fire up and Charlie turns to me and says, “Okay, your turn. Suit up!”

I already have my wetsuit on. It’s just a matter of pulling the jacket zipper up and getting my gloves on and over my now zipped wrists. I have plenty of help as the boat bounces and rolls on its way to my destiny. By the time I have my mask on, I hear whoops and hollers from the other boat as the female member of that group jumps on her first whale. Even the air swooshing into my male ego balloon couldn’t get me higher than the butterflies still riding my stomach. “This one looks good Terry. You ready?” Fred asks, looking back over my shoulder.

I turn to see what he’s talking about (darn tunnel vision in a mask!). Then Charlie shouts, “Here it is! Go!” and I’m pushed into turning the other way and to my surprise I see the barnacle-covered gray carpet less than two feet from the edge of the boat.

I lunge over the side and feel the “ground” under me immediately. At once, I realize this “ground” is moving and throw myself forward as I was told, with arms outstretched like I’m about to hug a tree. I’m feeling the barnacles punch through the knees of my wetsuit and then the insides of my arms, but in the moment I don’t care, as the lower portion of my body is being raised into the air and starting to bend my back in a position that it doesn’t normally bend in.

All at once my lower portion is now falling and then making contact with the ground rising up to meet it for a second and then falling again. As this happens over and over, the upper part of my body is being wrenched slightly this way and that and in some remote portion of my brain pain is being recorded, sent from the inside of my arms and now my chest. I can’t see a thing, mainly because all of my senses are on red alert and it’s hard to tell sight from sound and touch.

Suddenly my mask is whisked from my face and the coldness of the water hitting my warm skin sends even more 911’s to my brain. I taste salt and smell fishiness, although at the moment I don’t recognize it.

I feel myself being pulled underwater and let go. Kicking like crazy, my feet bang against each other in the washing-machine effect of the water as the suction of the beast submerging pulls down.

I’ve felt this hundreds of times before and it always reminds me of being too small in too large of a wave when I was younger and learning about the ocean and its actions. This sometimes ended with me getting slammed into the sand bottom. But this time, suddenly I find myself on the surface and gasping for air.

My mask is around my neck—lucky me. The boat approaches. Everyone is laughing as they help me aboard. “You looked so funny!” my shipmates inform me.

“I thought for sure you were going to let go and try another one, Terry,” Charlie tells me. “You got on that one a bit late and were almost riding the tail. When you held on and slid back, I thought you were doing it on purpose!” He howls with laughter.

I ‘rode the whales’ three more times that day and went on two more trips in the following days and weeks, catching great rides and, I’m sure, scaring the heck out of dozens of gray whales in the process.

I now know the short adrenaline rushes I and my boat-mates received were not worth the trouble that we were causing to one of the world’s most majestic beasts. Due to this type of activity and others, some even worse I’m sure, the gray whales started to change the migratory patterns that they had held for at least as long as white people had noticed and recorded, and most likely for thousands of years before that. Government stepped in with laws to protect these animals.

The solution that I see to keep this type of activity from happening without having the government constantly stepping in with law, and all that it entails, is a different vision of the world around us.

If we humans continue to look at the world as separate from ourselves, only as a resource to be used, then government will always have to step in with its laws and bureaucracy. Someone will always want to use a resource in a different way than another person.

If we look at the world as part of ourselves, and we a part of it, then there is no reason for a government to intrude. Why would anyone do something to harm anything around them, when doing so harms themselves and everyone they love? This shift in seeing the world differently is subtle, yet as difficult as it is powerful.

It seems as if the “primitive” populations all over the planet (the few that are left) see it this way. Only we “civilized” folks seem to need the laws to hold us in check. §