Video – Kate Spencer Talks About Art and Lizardfis...
This one-minute video captures what Lizardfish Studios is all about — painting and drawing wildlife, sharing what I see with the world, and having fun learning about nature. The footage was shot by Monterey videographer extraordinaire Zee Labega at WebSmartVideos.com. She’s the one to call if you’re thinking of adding...
Kate’s Cross-country Dream Ride
In 2010 Kate is 40 and to celebrate she’s planning a bicycle tour across North America — with a sketchbook and a snake hook. This has been her dream since high school. She’ll be sketching her way across the landscape, finding as many species of salamanders and lizards as she can, while camping and traveling under her own power. Yes,...
Whale Watching with Kate the Naturalist
Kate is a guide and naturalist on whale watching boat tours in some spectacular locations. At home in Monterey, California, she is one of the principal naturalists for Monterey Bay Whale Watch, the only company that sends every boat out with a professional marine biologist/naturalist. During summers in Southeast Alaska, Kate has guided...
Art by Kate
Watercolor, 12"x10" Kate Spencer is a professional artist who paints biologically accurate wildlife, marine life, and beautiful landsapes. Many of her works are in watercolor, pen and ink on scratchboard, or colored pencil. Increasingly she is painting in oils. Kate values traditional hand-made art media and while...
Sharing the Whales with the Local World
Kate’s Article on Whale Watching Appears in the Monterey County Weekly
I want local people in the Monterey Bay to know that the whales they’ve been hearing about this summer are still here, and that whale watching is not just for tourists. School is back in session and what better experiential learning opportunity is there than seeing the biggest animals ever to have lived on Earth, first-hand? My opinion piece inviting locals to venture onto the ocean appears in the “Local Spin” column in the August 26, 2010 issue of the Monterey County Weekly.
Mark Anderson, one of the editors of the Monterey County Weekly, was on my whale watch a few weeks ago. He knows me from my public poetry readings as Pacific Grove’s Poet in Residence back in 2004–2006 and was curious what I’d have to say about whales, beyond my usual narration on the boat.
Writing this piece required a difficult cognitive shift from the factual reporting and encouraging directing (“Look left!”) I do on the microphone. The audience for this free paper is broader than the self-selecting subset that pays to go on a marine excursion. My goal was to inspire people who might not normally consider whale watching to give it a try. I had to show the value of opening oneself to an unfamiliar experience, one that many people know can induce some very uncomfortable side-effects. Quoting actual happy guests from recent trips was the ticket.
I’m glad for the chance to share my point of view, and hope it brings some new kids, of all ages, out to marvel at the whales.
Read my piece, “More Than a Fluke: Big Lessons from Schooling with the Whales” here.
Curious Whale Sprays Onlookers
We nicknamed the whale Propellor because there is a line of welts down its back and a gouge in its side, obviously from close contact with a small boat’s propellor. It’s all healed, and it certainly doesn’t deter this strong adult Humpback Whale from approaching large whale-watching boats and swimming around them repeatedly. It apparently just likes boats — that’s probably how it got that wound in the first place.
When Propellor showed up in Monterey Bay in July, there were several days where many whale watch tours were treated to exceptionally close encounters of the large kind. Here is a video I shot while narrating one of Propellor’s visits to the Sea Wolf II. I’m upstairs, looking down at the guests cramming the rail to get close to this amazing, sentient visitor. One person at the rail has a particularly large Canon lens. He’s Daniel Bianchetta, a local photographer who comes out often with Monterey Bay Whale Watch, the company I guide for. You can see some of his stunning photographs, including a Humpback Whale’s eye, at www.bigsurphoto.com under Liquid Nature.
Helping Scientists Track Basking Sharks in Monterey Bay
This summer two shark biologists hope to place up to five satellite pop-up tracking tags on basking sharks Cetorhinus maximus in Monterey Bay. Sean van Sommeran of the Pelagic Shark Foundation in Santa Cruz and Steve Wilson at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station have received a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to pay for the tags, boat time, and even aerial surveys to find the sharks. I am coordinating sightings reports from whale-watching vessels on Monterey Bay and relaying them to the researchers so they can quickly launch a tagging effort when sharks are seen.
Basking sharks are large filter-feeders that strain zooplankton from the water by swimming continuously with their enormous mouths agape, as tropical whale sharks do. They look more like overgrown great white sharks with bulbous snouts and gills that wrap almost all the way around their heads from crown to chin. They can grow from 20 to 40 feet long, though after heavy sport and commercial hunting earlier in the 20th Century such large individuals have become uncommon.
A handful of basking sharks have been seen this year, including one the day of this writing. Last summer I called Barbara Block, head of the Tuna Research and Conservation Center, who oversees several shark and tuna tagging projects, when I saw several basking sharks on regular whale watches. She was interested but wasn’t set up to tag these sharks locally. It’s exciting that this year Steve and Sean have the funding and infrastructure in place to get some long-term tags on these impressive animals. Hopefully the tag data will reveal where these behemoths go in the winter and how they use their habitat.
To learn more about research tagging of great white sharks, whale sharks, makos, tunas, elephant seals, albatrosses, leatherback turtles, and other pelagic (open-ocean) species, check out Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP). This collaboration among many researchers is taking a big step forward as Global Tagging of Pacific Predators, or GTOPP, which combines many different data-sets with Google Earth so that anyone can follow individual animals in real-time online. Incidentally I designed the logos for both TOPP and GTOPP, so look for them on these sites.
Dolphins Bow-riding in Monterey Bay
It’s a great summer for watching humpback and blue whales in Monterey Bay, and there are thousands of dolphins here too. On a recent calm morning, hundreds of Pacific white-sided dolphins surrounded the Monterey Bay Whale Watch tour I was narrating, and over a dozen slipped in under the bow for a free ride. They surfed the bow wave for a mile. In this video you can hear me answering questions about the dolphins and about the humpback whales we had seen earlier, which are usually seen in twos or threes. Watch for the single blowhole that all dolphins and toothed whales have, and look for individuals turning on their sides to look up at the people on the Point Sur Clipper. We don’t see dolphins every day but when we do it can be a fantastic experience.
About Kate Spencer
I have woven a lifestyle around nature, art, science, and travel. My vision centers on the natural world: primarily the incredible beauty of it and the accomplishment of presenting it accurately, but also the struggle to be good stewards amidst the tsunami of mindless consumption. More...
Facebook
Twitter
Facebook
Twitter
Buzz