Whale Surprises Paddle Boarders - NBC Bay Area

Whale Surprises Paddle Boarders

You can see lots of cameras in the picture, but one particular photographer caused this scene to go viral.



    Up Close and Personal Whale Watching

    Whale watching is a summertime tradition along the California coast and this year, the whales are closer to shore than ever. (Published Sunday, Aug. 26, 2012)

    A pod of humpback whales must have wondered what all th e fuss was on the surface, what with all the paddle boarders and kayakers frolicking. So they did what anyone would -- they took their massive size and breached, all 75,000 pounds of them.

    (Actually, they were chasing a bait ball of condensed sardines and were just hungry, but still....)

    The photos were taken on Saturday by photographer Bill Bouton.

    Bouton captured a few frames of the moment when the whales decided to hang out, according to the Daily Mail.

    He told the paper he had time to pull over and set up a tripod to take pictures of bird. He quickly switched his focus from the birds to the mammals that were peeking.

    He said the whales stayed about 1/8 mile from shore for about an hour and a half.

    “By watching what the birds were doing, one could often guess where the whale was going to lunge up out of the water because they were all after the same food,” Bouton told the San Luis Obispo newspaper.

    He posted the photos to his Flickr account and they went viral.