It’s not always a whale of a trip

‘Blow!” came the long-awaited cry, from someone aboard the Monte Carlo, and suddenly scores of people who for hours had appeared comatose were up and alert.

It was 3:44 p.m.

The vessel had left its San Pedro dock at 8:15 a.m. on a daylong search timed to coincide with the peak period of the northbound Pacific gray whale migration.

Capt. Danny Strunk crossed the bumpy channel to the west end of Santa Catalina Island, a popular passing point for thousands of whales returning from Baja California to home waters north of Alaska.

He conversed on the radio with island fishermen and tried to intercept whales they said were headed his way. Passengers scanned through binoculars, looking like human radar units.

No spouts. No blubber.

Long, uneventful stretches lulled some into slumber and lured others queasily to rails, over which they prayed for a swift end to their misery.

“It just goes to show,” a booming voice over the P.A. informed those who were still coherent, “that when you think you know a lot about these animals they go and pull tricks like this out of the bag.”

They are incredible animals; not just whales but all order of Cetacea: spellbinding, possessing miraculous, magical healing powers.

This must be true because when two whales finally did materialize, after the Monte Carlo had returned to the mainland, those silently begging for last rites sprung to life.

Pasty green faces turned flush again. And when the whales fluked for them, seeming to wave with their tails, their gloominess vanished like whale breaths puffed into the wind.

“At least we got one,” said one relieved passenger, her voice trailing. “At least we got one.”

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Our journey begins promisingly, beneath a radiant sky and atop a blue-green ocean stretching like flimsy cellophane toward the horizon.

The “Ultimate Whalewatch” is one of several annual adventures benefiting the Los Angeles chapter of the American Cetacean Society, acs-la.org.

Bird specialist Kimball Garrett is aboard; so is whale expert Alisa Schulman-Janiger. Ninety passengers jammed aboard the 75-foot boat anticipate a wonderful show.

Surprisingly, they include children; not many, but some, and without hand-held games, proving that a fondness for the outdoors still exists among a generation seemingly lost to computerized gadgetry.

“It’s just such a mystery; you never know what you’re going to see,” says Cody Martin, 12, a budding marine photographer from El Segundo.

None of his friends are with him, he explains, “because they’re all computer geeks, basically. They actually think I’m weird because I talk so much about whales.”

The vessel glides past great blue herons perched on a moss-covered marine wall. A pair of elegant terns, orange-beaked birds arriving from South America, streak past.

Gulls, cormorants and brown pelicans soar and plunge. Far into the channel, Garrett identifies a pair of black-and-white Xantus’ murrelets on the water, “a special sighting for this area.”

Schulman-Janiger chatters on about gray whales but cannot produce one shred of evidence that 20,000 of them still exist.

Sleepy heads bob. The Monte Carlo lurches. A tilting horizon becomes too much for some to bear. One by one they’re drawn to the rail, as though it were a magnet.

Finally, mammalian relief. “Dolphins!” They’re common dolphins. Small groups run alongside the boat and people are delighted to see them.

But alas, they’re more hungry than curious, so they dash off to resume their hunt.

Anticipation mounts as the vessel reaches the island’s west end, but a fisherman’s radio claim of forthcoming whales becomes a false alarm.

A larger group of much smaller common dolphins arrives and some flip and tail-walk as if overjoyed. But after a minute they, too, decide we’re not worth fussing over.

This becomes a theme. Six much larger bottlenose dolphins swim curiously to the boat and begin to interact. They visit in pairs, taking turns investigating these odd-looking inhabitants of the dry universe.

One barks like a dog. The lone juvenile turns on its side and shoots a blast of bubbles and looks to be laughing underwater.

Then they just drift off, leaving us with a decision to make. Smartly, that is to return toward the coast because, surely, that’s where the whales are on this balmy spring day.

The crossing is long and slow; there is more dozing and color draining from faces. But spirits soar when another vessel, the Voyager, is spotted in the distance, stalking two whales.

But, alas, we arrive to learn its captain has lost the leviathans. But how can this be? Whales must rise to breathe and these are 35-ton animals; they cannot hide.

We’re a deflated bunch. Perplexed. Defeated.

But someone has looked in the proper direction. A heart-shaped plume wafts upward, 200 yards to the north. “Blow!” comes the cry. And there’s a second blow, and a second cry.

They’re distant and traveling dutifully north, while we’re running late and must be turning around, but Strunk stays long enough for us to watch them rise once, twice and again.

And as the Monte Carlo turns toward San Pedro, the sun now low in the sky, the last images become the most indelible: faraway flukes disappearing into a rippled blue ocean.

At least we got them.

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pete.thomas@latimes.com