Good Things Come to Those Who Wait - Tale of the White Dolphin

A story from Katlyn Taylor.

White Risso’s dolphin

Casper is just a youngster, but already a legend in Monterey Bay. This all-white Risso’s dolphin has a fan following, and Katlyn, co-editor of Wild Monterey Bay, hopes we’ll become a fan of this little dolphin, too.

KATLYN TAYLOR is the manager, as well as naturalist and a staff biologist of Discovery Whale Watch. She is also the co-creator of Wild Monterey Bay and President of the Monterey Chapter of the American Cetacean Society at the time of her interview.

Katlyn was born in Portland, Oregon and grew up in Oregon City, OR.  She has always been interested in everything wildlife. As a child, Katlyn went to the beach at least once or twice a summer with her parents and sister. Her family bought tide pool books and taught themselves how to identify the animals and plants in the tide pools. These trips were always exciting. If the Taylor family needed a flashlight to get up at the best low tide of the day for the tide pools, her mom made sure that they’d get a flashlight! They did their tide pooling at iconic Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach, which also had nesting puffins. Sometimes they would do their tide pooling at Ecola State Park and Indian Beach.

Katlyn’s father was a high school math teacher and is now a high school principal. Her mom was initially a stay-at-home mom, then a small business owner, after which she became a teaching aid for elementary and middle school. She ultimately became a high school administrator serving as both a vice principal and principal.

Katlyn says that even though her parents weren’t scientists, they always provided her the resources to answer the questions she had about nature, and they facilitated opportunities for her to experience it first hand. Her mom may not have had all the answers, but she knew how to help Katlyn find them.

Katlyn attended Oregon State University (OSU) in Corvallis, Oregon, also located in the Willamette Valley where she grew up. It wasn’t until she got to college that Katlyn began to dig into marine science academically. She initially took a pass-no pass class about whales taught by Jim Sumich, renowned for his work with gray whales, thinking she was up for a weekend of fun at Newport Beach. How hard could it be? Katlyn kept asking questions in class, and Sumich kept saying, “Katlyn, science does not know the answer to your question!” so she decided she’d have to study marine biology.

Katlyn was able to take a number of marine mammal courses while at OSU, since the school has an excellent marine mammal program. While at OSU, Katlyn joined the Oregon Chapter of the American Cetacean Society and took the Naturalist class they offered. She graduated with a Bachelors in Science degree in Marine Biology and a Bachelors in Art in International Studies.

Just prior to graduation, Katlyn applied to several places for work and got offered an unpaid internship at Monterey Bay Whale Watch (MBWW). She packed her car and drove down with her dad, hoping for the best.

Katlyn had been to Monterey once before. In 2013 when the warm water “Blob” parked itself off the West Coast of the US and hundreds of humpback whales showed up to feed in Monterey Bay, the event made the news in Oregon. At Thanksgiving, Katlyn and her mom got online and checked out all the sightings listed by the various whale watch companies on Monterey Bay. They then Google mapped to see how long it would take to get there if they left right then, hoping to be there in time for a morning whale watch trip. But Katlyn’s dad put the kibosh on that plan.

During the following Winter Break, Katlyn volunteered at the Oregon State Parks Whale Watch Interpretation Program, which takes place all up and down the Oregon Coast during gray whale migration. Her station saw one whale the whole rainy and foggy week. Four days later she and her parents drove down to Monterey. When they arrived they parked at Pt. Pinos, and in the first hour they saw 30 gray whales. Katlyn realized the whales had to have swum right by her post in Oregon, but she missed them all thanks to the poor visibility.

She and her family then went whale watching, and Katlyn decided she needed to figure out how to come back to the area. The following March, Katlyn drove down again with some friends for Spring Break. She went whale watching again, chatted up some of the whale watch companies about a job, and they told her to keep trying. Then she got the internship.

A month into the internship Katlyn started getting paid working in the company shop through the winter, and then in the spring some paid jobs opened up on the boats. Katlyn worked on the boats pretty much full time that whole summer, including working with a BBC film crew, and also doing research for Nancy Black, the owner of MBWW. She continued her work there for two years until she pursued a new opportunity at Discovery Whale Watch. At MBWW Katlyn had met “this person named Jodi”, who invited her to work on Wild Monterey Bay with her. Katlyn said yes, and the rest is history.

 You can watch Katlyn’s story on Youtube here: https://youtu.be/FrNTm-7l8hs

GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT – Tale of the White Dolphin

So, my most memorable wildlife encounter in Monterey Bay to date just happened, like last week. Yeah. I have worked in Monterey the entire sighting history of this all-white Risso’s dolphin, and I have not seen it the entire five years I’ve worked here. I think the first sighting was like October 20l4, and I got here in June of 2014. And finally this last week, I saw it!! (laughter)

I’ve been saying for like months to the captain, “I need to see this dolphin. I’ve not seen it.” And they all forget, they’re like, “Wait, wait we’ve seen it a bunch of times.” “I know, but I haven’t, so like please help me!“

So we’re headed out on a whale watch with Discovery[1]. I was on the Pacifica, and we sent out our other boat, the Chubasco, at the same time, and we came across this big group of Risso’s. Casper is what they’ve been calling him, though the name is up for debate, honestly, in my opinion[2]. But his group has been around a lot. There’s been four or five sightings in the last two months, which is pretty high, cause the dolphin has only been sighted every six to eight months the rest of the time it’s been around.

Well, we had Risso’s when we first went out on this 9:00am whale watch, and it was really calm. And I was like, “Man, I really hope we find it. I really, really want to see it!!” So I was looking super hard! Every group of Risso’s we had, I was looking, looking, looking. We didn’t see it, but there were Risso’s for miles. From just inside Point Pinos for at least three or four miles.

So we just kept kinda cruising along cause we really wanted to find some humpbacks as well, since we can’t just look at Risso’s for 45 minutes. Fine. I guess today’s not the day.

Next thing, the boat turns around. I’m outside on the deck, and I’m talking to passengers, and the boat does a 180. I run up to the wheelhouse, and like, “Did they find it?” And he’s like, “Come into the wheelhouse.” The captain Rod is like, “Come in here.” And I’m like, “They’ve found it! They’ve found it!! (laughter) I can’t contain myself, and he says, “Calm down, I don’t know, we’re going to try.” “Thank you, thank you!!!”

The Chubasco found it. So they waited for us to turn around and come back to them so that I could see it. We only got just a little glimpse. I got three photos, but I was still just over the moon that I saw it. It was like kind of a dark sky, but glassy, calm seas, and so it’s just like this big white beacon sticking out on the ocean.

I was like, “YES, we saw it!” So then for me that was like trip made! Morning made! We head on out and have a great whale watch with humpbacks, and some nice looks at albatross, and then we’re cruising back in, and the Risso’s are still there. There’s still miles of Risso’s. And so, I’m like, “Hmm. I wonder if he’s still there? He or she. And I’m looking with the binoculars really closely, and I found it! So we went over there, and the captain gave us some extra time, an extra fifteen minutes to spend with the dolphin and it showed really well. It actually left mom for awhile. So a bunch of the adults, including its mom, kept traveling and it just kind of stayed by the boat and circled around. And there was this, ach, it was just so perfect! That was incredible!

And then all of a sudden towards the end of the sighting, the captain was like, “OK, we’ve got to go.” And I was like, “All right” and I was telling the people “We’re getting our last looks of the dolphin,” and things like that on the microphone, and then it realized that all of the other adults were gone and it had been by itself with the boat for awhile, and just like, ‘fwoooh’ took off and caught up to the rest of the adults, which were already like a quarter of a mile away.

So that was really, really cool. I’m so glad I got to see that. Good things come to those who wait.

[1] Discovery Whale Watch

[2] Other names include ‘Albert the Albino’ and ‘Lawn Chair’