God created great whales

I was in San Diego a couple weekends ago and went on a whale watching tour with a friend.

On the ride out of Mission Bay, the tour guide prepped us on what we might see and gave instructions on how to help out. We expected to see sea lions, sea gulls, pelicans, dolphins, and maybe a whale if we were lucky. And we were asked to shout when we saw something :)

We saw most of the animals within the first few minutes, before even getting out of the bay. About 10 minutes past the end of the jetty, we were excited to see a pod of dolphins swim and jumping near our boat.

Full speed ahead!

We blew right by them!?! I was disappointed when the boat didn’t slow down for the dolphis, but the tour guide got on the loudspeaker again:

Normally we would stop and spend more time with these dolphins, but we heard on the radio that there are some killer whales further out, so we are going to try to catch those!

We sailed another 20 minutes or so and caught site of another tour boat and a couple ocean dinghies. They were following and watching something! Another minute or two and we caught our first sight of them…

Wow! Two males and one female!

Even from hundreds of yards away, they were majestic.

We sailed in closer until after a while they disappeared. The tour guide explained they typically submerge for 2 – 5 minutes, and here’s where our job came in as the passengers.

We got in a pattern of watching the whales for several minutes until they submerged and then waiting for them to pop up again. Someone on the boat would spot them and we’d quickly sail towards them, catching majestic glimpses of their fins and a little more than that through binoculars :) This often involved the mass of passengers rushing from one side of the boat to the other to get the best view.

Finally, the tour guide announced:

We’re going to wait for them to come up one more time and then we have to head back.

By now, we were tired from running back and forth, and my friend was feeling a little nauseous, so we just sat on one side of the boat and leaned against the railing.

Unbeknownst to me, my friend said a prayer:

I’m not feeling well, and I feel super dizzy and sea sick and just want to rest for a little bit. If you’re listening, can you just have the whales come to us… In fact, it would be nice if they just popped up in front of us.

Vualá! There it was!

Breathtaking!

Right in front of us, as if by divine design ;) one of the whales slowly rose, beginning with a dark outline, then textured shape of a whale. Finally we could see the white around it’s eye, and the fin emerged with an explosion of air exhaled from the blowhole.

Perhaps the existence of majestic whales in the first place could be an evidence of God’s existence and love, but this time He answered quite directly :)

We were even more astounded when we sailed back to port listening to the tour guide explain that they hadn’t seen an Orca in San Diego for two years, and that in her 10 years of experience, she had never seen one come that close!

What a tender mercy for our Heavenly Parents to let my friend know they were listening :) And what an unlikely, beyond-chance treat for us to be blessed with!

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p.s. If you’d like to see a video with the whale and the tour guides reaction, here you go :)