The Unsecret Life of Monterey Bay’s Whales and Cannery Row
If you’re a whale in Monterey Bay, everybody knows your business.
On the eve of our morning whale watching sail, I found the entire marine mammal community to be hotter gossip on the California peninsula than the Royal Wedding two days away or that the Golden State Warriors were trouncing my hometown and hapless Houston Rockets in the NBA Conference Finals.
In Gladys Kravitz-like fashion, the welcoming shopkeeper in the historic old town saturated us with sighting updates of her sea-living neighbors. An orca had been spotted over the weekend, she reported from Facebook, but most of the whales lumbering about the bay were humpbacks. Sea lions congregate on the jetty by Fisherman’s Wharf, she continued, and you can easily see them as you depart on your whale watching tour. Keep your eyes peeled for sea otters, she went on, while following her recommended shoreline trail route to Cannery Row. They swim nearshore, she confided, and you can spot their round heads poking out of the water.
I wondered if she moonlighted at the tourist bureau as I craned to listen from the curtained dressing room where I was deciding between the blue or salmon striped jersey tee with suede elbow patches. She highlighted the sea otter exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium—be sure to crowd up to the glass early for the entertaining feeding demonstrations, she advised. She itemized her favorite dining and cocktail spots within walking distance, for shared plates, a romantic meal, good food on a budget as well as in adjoining Pacific Grove, her neighborhood from where she’d ridden her bike into work at the shop that morning.
The night after our whale watching excursion, our hippy Uber driver with plastic figurines glued to the driver’s side dashboard asked us how our day had been (another shill for the tourist bureau). He nodded knowingly at our admission of having a fantastic day stalking sea mammals. I guess that’s what every visitor does. He’d seen on Facebook that schools of dolphins had been spotted and that whale sightings had been aplenty. He talked about training for the Coast Guard in Florida and that he learned a lot about wildlife during a side hustle for a deep-sea fishing charter there.
Mark and I awaited the whale waiting cruise in pristine Monterey Bay.
Why Not Tell a Whale of a Story?
After all, there are plenty of marine-life tales to be told while in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Along with the few hundred other spectators who shuffled down to the docks on a cool morning—hot coffee in hand—we boarded one of the handful of whale watching vessels setting out for 9 a.m. runs. About 50 of us on our 22-foot boat soaked in the sea-life narrative from Joe, our marine biologist, as well as tips from the crew about seasickness, how to prevent it, where to congregate if you felt it setting in and where to stand if you’d reached the nauseated point of no return. I’d already taken Dramamine but popped another for insurance. After leaving the dock, it wasn’t long before a fellow passenger was crumbled onto a bench at the stern clutching a motion sickness bag for the four-hour trip. I felt utter sympathy but was relieved it wasn’t me…at least not that time.
Thanks to acupressure wrist bands and another Dramamine halfway into the journey, I was able to appreciate the uncommon spectacle of a young whale “breaching” with mamma whale chugging along behind sans the aquatic calisthenics. Thrusting his whole body straight up above water and arching sideways to dive back below the surface, he thrilled us 20 yards off the boat for 15 minutes. On his side, he would slap the water once or twice with a giant dorsal fin like a hinged door closing. Sometimes he would complete the whole sequence in slow motion. We all rooted both feet as firmly as possible and hung onto the boat as we rocked along the wavy sea at slow speed, simply watching or trying to photograph and video the rarity.
Joe tracked a total of 14 humpbacks, and I felt like I had seen most of them, hurrying from side to side around the crowded bow or the unpopulated stern where my motion-sick kindred soul miserably continued hunching into her paper bag. Also, among our onboard wildlife sightings, we raced a school of 300 Pacific white-sided dolphins, looping and rippling along both sides of the boat, glistening like lumps of melting chocolate bars, with their fin and bodies reflecting the sea and sunlight.
From Sardines and Sea Otters to Steinbeck, Cannery Row Remains Vibrant
Although the mid-May visit was our first to California’s Central Coast, I’d visited San Francisco several times for business and pleasure. Heading south to nature haven Monterey instead of North to Napa and Sonoma made for a new exploration.
Silly sea otters seized the day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Photo courtesy of Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Monterey Bay Aquarium, on the site of an old commercial sardine processing facility, invited visitors in at the foot of Cannery Row. As predicted by our encyclopedic shopkeeper, the summersaulting sea otters commanded the spotlight, diving deep and backstroking atop their two-story habitat. So silly close up, whirling and twirling, with their curious eyes and panda bear-like noses, they looked so friendly, back paddling along and scrubbing at their fur. The preening creates a bubble-like barrier within their fur to keep their bodies warm and stay buoyant. I pondered having one as a lovable house pet, not that our two 60-pound dogs would allow it. We learned during the feeding presentation sea otters had reached near extinction by 1911 until a group of 50 was found in a remote niche along the Big Sur coastline within Monterey Bay. They were brought into captivity to preserve, take care of and release back into the wild. Their numbers have reached nearly 3,000 since then.
Jelly fish mania deceived admirers by their beauty and elegance in order to divert attention from their painful sting if experienced in open water. We know you're kind, jelly.
Other aquarium favorites were the scuba diver submerged in the kelp forest feeding small fish (sustainably farmed, of course) to a freakishly large sea bass and his schoolmates. The octopus, unfurling his suction-cup tentacles onto the tank’s glass, drew another mob. Being among the electric-blue illuminated jellyfish tanks made me feel like Ed Harris in The Abyss when he dropped onto the blinding neon life form at ocean’s bottom. Monterey’s jellies wafted up and down like flan and ivory-colored mushroom tops with ruffled edges and fluttering tentacles. Thanks to these choreographed movements and elegant disguises, they didn’t look like the burning stingers they are in open water.
The octopus: very clingy (above). Sharks, sea bass and other fish in the faux sea dined on sustainably farmed sushi bites, thanks to the aquarium's scuba diving staffer (below).
Aside from patinaed wood-sided facades, Cannery Row—long restored or repurposed from the era John Steinbeck wrote about—felt mostly modern with some high-flying boutiques, in-fill hotels and souvenir shops. It was vibrant, and people poked along, ducking into restaurants and businesses. Bravo to Monterey for not just saving a keystone of its heritage but also documenting it in the process. In the garden nooks busts of Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts, his marine biologist friend from whom he modeled his intellectual character “Doc” in Cannery Row, attracted literary enthusiasts. Sidewalk story billboards and wall murals celebrated immigrants who founded and worked the sardine canning trade and their contributions to the foundation for the fishing town.
John Steinbeck's bust looked nattily weathered but very writer-like with his crew neck sweater and jacket. What was your favorite work of his?
Getting to Cannery Row on foot from historic main street bisected the Monterey State Historic Park complex, a preserved collection of mid 1800s structures reflecting California’s early history around the Mexican-American War Era. Writer Robert Louis Stevenson lived there for a time while courting a married woman he desperately loved and before going on to write Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Treasure Island. Past the historic park, walkers traced a trail at the water’s edge with crisp bay wind rustling in the rosemary shrubs. Deep into Spring, the shoreline exploded in bloom. Skateboarders, kid strollers and bicycles rolled by, with one cycling couple talking about the importance of protecting the habitats of diverse shark species. A pair of artists ferried canvases and painting supplies from their cars down the embankment to set up easels overlooking the weathered structure at the shore of the sea lions’ jetty.
The footpath along Cannery Row lead straight through the front doors of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
The painters. Steinbeck. The shopkeeper and Uber driver. And me, all telling the story of the bay and its dwellers. All the attention is a good thing for preservation of the environment and preserving the history that brought it to this point. When you go, what story will you add to the collection?
Please subscribe to my By Coach & Carriage newsletter and follow me on Instagram for great old architecture vignettes and lagniappe (a little something extra).
Lagniappe (A Little Something Extra)
For eating and drinking along the Monterey Peninsula, here are a few spots I enjoyed: In Monterey…Montrio for its seared scallops with carrot quinoa and location in a refurbished historic firehouse. A Taste of Monterey on the bay-facing side of Cannery Row for its wine flights, small bites and floor to ceiling view of the bay and lollygagging sea otters below. In Pacific Grove…Jeninni Kitchen + Wine Bar for its eggplant fries, which can be still quite delicious, cold the next day from a napkin tucked into a purse pocket. In Carmel by the Sea…Terry’s Lounge at the 1927 Mediterranean-style Cypress Inn, which is tastefully stuffed with owner Doris Day’s collections and allows even large dogs to recline in the lobby over a bowl of water alongside their momma having a glass of wine. La Bicycleta for its snug European country café atmosphere, roasted beet salad with dried cherries, dill creme fraiche and citrus vinaigrette, and wood-oven fired pizza of artichokes, garlic confit and Manchego cheese.
If you visit A Taste of Monterey, watch for this sealife interloper behind the glass. He never truly caught on that three was a crowd.
