Whale Jumping?

A few weeks ago I was out for a ride on my jetski a few weeks ago, and I wasn't able to find the friend that I was trying to meet up with to go halibut fishing. I put Wasabi (picture below) in the water at the Auke Bay ramp and headed up the coast towards Amalga Harbor. The salmon were jumping all around me, and I stopped a few places to try and tempt them to bite my lures. No luck.

As I neared Lena Point, I saw a few whales heading northward. I turned off the engine and could hear them exhaling as they came up to breathe. Up by Amalga a few sea lions were checking me out, surfacing on one side of the jetski, then the other.

When I got back to Auke Bay, I pulled up by the floating pier where some colleagues of mine were running a weigh station for a USCG fishing derby that was going on that weekend. A National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Enforcement Officer that I know walked up and asked to see my license and boat registration. I thought maybe he didn't recognize me at first, and thought I might have some fish he could check.

Then he started asking me questions about where I had been that day, and whether I had seen any whales. I said I had seen some whales near Lena Point, and he told me that he someone had called 911 with a report of a jetskier meeting my description jumping over whales.

"Jumping over whales?!?," I repeated. I just started laughing and almost fell off Wasabi and into the water. Once I sort of regained my composure, I told the NOAA officer that I didn't get closer than 75-100 yards from any of the whales I saw during my ride. He asked if I had seen any other jetskis during my ride. I said I hadn't even seen any other boats within several miles when I saw the whales.

I asked where the people were located who made the report, and he told me they were on shore somewhere near Lena Point. After a little more discussion, we realized that the people who reported my supposed "whale jumping" must have been several miles away and looking through a spotting scope or some high power binoculars. They probably had no idea of the actual depth perception of what they were looking at.

They may have seen me speeding off and creating a wake, and then saw some whales surfacing behind me, but there was no way I was hurtling through the air (on a jetski that weighs 1,000 pounds including me and fishing gear) on an extremely calm day. I may never have taken physics, but I know that I could not have jumped over the whales on that day given the prevailing weather conditions.

Of course now people at work call me the Whale Jumper.