When I bike the boards of Long Beach shore I keep an eye out for whales. Armed with my new Nikon Z7 ii on my bikes back I feel I’m ready. But it’s hard to catch them blowing and breaching over the boardwalk’s rail and not crash into someone or thing.

So my favorite way to spot whales is to let others point the way.

More often than not, I see people at the rail pointing to sea and calling others to look.

This past Tuesday, Oct 17, 2023 about 9:15 a.m. I pulled up at the boardwalk rail of New York Ave beach. I came upon a man on one side of the beach pass booth looking at his iPhone. I asked if he saw any whales. He said, no.

While talking to him, on the other side of the pass booth I saw two men pointing out to sea. I squinted out and I asked them, “Whales?” They answered, “Yes, see, right out there!”

I looked and saw boats fishing, birds diving then—whales. They were breaking the surface, then gone—again and again.

We could see there were two of them progressing west in their dives and breaches.

They were far out for my 300mm lens but I did what I could. They’d dive and I’d keep my eye glued to my viewfinder trying to catch them breach. Sometimes they’d have moved further away and I’d struggle to catch them. I knew I caught some action and hoped for the best.

When I got home and uploaded the shots I didn’t see any remarkable shots and wasn’t going to post them anywhere.

But I finally did on Facebook and was amazed at the interest.

So, now I decided that maybe I underestimate the fascination the whales carry for us, even when these are not Whale-Watch cruise quality.

So here are the rest of the shots, some cropped closeups of wide shots to give you a better view. I give you the scene as I saw it, sometimes just the splash and a bit of whale, sometimes with the beach for perspective.

Sometimes the whales were pretty damn close to the boats. But they are always fun to see, camera or not, great shots or not:

Be well,
Leebythesea