‘Hell of a blow.’ Humpback whale once slammed into Morro Bay fishing boat, killing man
I bet we think about whales a lot more than they think about us.
To be fair, they have a lot on their minds.
You know, places to swim, sharks to see, trying out that new seafood place that just opened.
My whale story is from 20 years ago. In September 2000 the newspaper got a call from PG&E meteorologist John Lindsey saying there was a spectacular pod of humpack whales feeding near the nuclear power plant.
When we went out in a 28-foot aluminum boat, we seemed small compared to the massive marine mammals.
Adult humpbacks can be more than 20 feet longer than our boat was and weigh up to 30 tons, making them some of the largest creatures on Earth.
We stayed well over 100 yards from the leviathans as they breached through a bait ball.
A set of whales circled, keeping their prey concentrated as seals, seagulls and pelicans dove into the mix with the whales.
I was shooting photos through a long telephoto lens, which would usually make me sick on a rocking boat, but the excitement was greater than my lack of sea legs.
At one point, the person next to me exclaimed and I took my eye away from the lens.
One of the whales had chosen to exit the bait ball, and out of almost 360 degrees of open ocean decided to come our way.
It bridged the distance within a few feet. As the whale dove under our boat, we could see its smooth back arch — one vertebrae at a time — as it dove below.
I flashed back to stories of whalers, flipped into the sea by wounded cetaceans.
We weren’t touched but I got the sense that the whale was investigating the motor-driven creature that had arrived on the scene.
The sense of awe has never left me.
Recently, kayakers and paddleboarders near Port San Luis in Avila beach have had more intense encounters with the whales.
The port has issued safety guidance for paddlers.
There were whaling operations in Port San Luis and San Simeon in the 1800s, so it’s not surprising that whales would return to their old neighborhoods as populations rebound.
In 2002, a whale slammed into a fishing boat off the coast of Montana de Oro State Park, killing one man and injuring another. A 2003 story said the 22-foot fiberglass boat was repaired and went to sea again.
Neil Farrell wrote this story published in Sept. 4, 2002:
Collision with whale stuns local fishermen
Fishermen accustomed to the hazards of one of the most dangerous professions are still shaking their heads over the freak accident that killed Jerry Tibbs on Sunday.
A whale breached and landed on top of Tibbs’ boat, the BBQ, knocking the Bakersfield restaurateur and frequent Morro Bay sportfisherman into the ocean.
Coast Guard Chief Mike Saindon has spent the better part of the last three days searching records to see if this kind of fatal tragedy had been documented before. He came up empty.
“I’ve heard of countless boats hitting whales,” said Saindon, the commander of the Coast Guard’s station in Morro Bay.
“That’s pretty common, and it’s what we expected this to be when we got the distress call,” he said. “It really floored us when we saw the boat. We’re still in shock. It’s quite bizarre.”
It’s an extreme long shot, according to a local marine surveyor, but it can happen.
“A gray whale breached and landed on the side of my crew boat back around 1979,” recounted Jim Wood, a marine surveyor and ship captain from Morro Bay. “It was just outside of Port Hueneme.
“Fortunately, the boat was 65 feet and steel. We were making about 18 knots and managed to slip by before it slammed onto the aft rail and starboard transom corner.”
It was probably a humpback whale that struck the BBQ, and it must have been at least 10 feet off the water, said Harold Davis, owner of Davis Boats in Paso Robles and a friend of Tibbs. The damage may have been made worse due to the construction of the hull. It is effectively unsinkable.
“What crushed it was the buoyancy of the boat pushing against the weight of the whale,” Davis said. There was heavy damage to the roof and the seat, and major damage to the transom (the back end of the boat), where the whale’s body or head hit. “It was a hell of a blow,” he added.
The whale rolled over the wheelhouse and badly damaged the transom. Tibbs was thrown into the water and lost his life.
The BBQ’s radio antenna was broken by the whale, as was most of the electronic gear. Saindon said the three men left on board were unable to use the electronics to help rescuers find the boat.
“We were unable to hear them on our radio,” he said.
Security officers at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant were able to pick them up on their radio.
The Coast Guard rescued the three other Bakersfield men on board the boat — Charles Brim, Alan Brim and Richard Arrington. Arrington suffered a head injury and was taken to the hospital, treated and released.
Morro Bay contractor Joe Anderton was a “best friend” with Tibbs and fished with him many times. He was supposed to go fishing on the BBQ on Monday but instead spent Sunday night and Monday morning helping organize the volunteer search.
He also went to Port San Luis to pick up the boat, which had a fish hold filled with albacore. Pieces of whale flesh were snagged amid the damage.
Anderton said they gave the fish away to people standing around the hoist, commenting that Tibbs wouldn’t have wanted the fish to spoil.
