A young gray whale generated lots of excitement Saturday afternoon when it surfaced inside the harbor at Avalon on Santa Catalina Island.
“Whale in the harbor… right under the boat!” exclaims Jon Quarnstrom, in the first video clip accompanying this post. “A whale… right here!”
Quarnstrom, 38, a lifelong Catalina resident, told For The Win Outdoors that he and his young sons, Gavin and Kanon, and their dog Bali were crossing the harbor in their skiff when the whale “popped up looking right at my kids.”
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Bali, his tail tucked firmly between his legs, is not sure what to make of the surfacing whale.
“We see them all the time around the island during seasonal passes, but I’ve only seen this once before in the harbor,” said Quarnstrom, who works in a local steakhouse. “I was definitely shocked.”
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In the second video clip, shared Monday to the Catalina Island Facebook page, viewers can hear Quarnstrom’s commentary before his skiff enters the picture.
He’s not a safe distance, having apparently become caught up in the moment, but the mammal eventually departed the harbor to continue its journey.
The whale is one of a handful of juvenile gray whales to have been spotted recently off Southern California. These early sightings are in advance of a southbound migration, from feeding areas off Alaska to breeding areas off Mexico, that peaks locally in January.
Gray whales often migrate past the so-called backside of Catalina, keeping the land to their left on the southbound journey, said whale researcher Alisa-Schulman-Janiger.
Gray whale sightings inside Avalon Harbor, on the front side facing the mainland, are extremely rare.