TUBBY THE WHALE

Picture of Tubby taking a breath between pigging-out trips to the smorgasbord on the sea bottom.

Just my luck! There's a lot of plankton in front of my place all around the Copalis Rocks. Normally it attracts frequent trips of fishing boats. But this afternoon I'm out on my deck and spot a whale spout. I spent a lot of time that afternoon taking pictures of him-hoping he would leap into the air and I could get a great picture. HE NEVER BROKE THE WATER, FLIPPED HIS TAIL OR NUTTHIN'! He stayed in the same general area all afternoon. An old time fisherman I know told me it was probably a whale that was "bottom feeding" - taking a breath, sinking to the bottom and scuttling along through the rich concentration of plankton, shrimp and other tasty morsels and filtering them through its gills and gorging himself for hours. Every day after that it was the same thing. I finally got a whale expert friend of mine, professor Campbell of Cal Tech to come up and check this whale out. He came and was as fascinated as I was, and put on scuba gear and checked this whale out. He reported that it was in fact a Blue Whale - the biggest mammal to have ever lived on earth (larger than the biggest dinosaur that ever existed). Professor Cambell's report states: "He's a guy for sure-and he's smart! There's all that plankton making a lot of great "junk food" on the bottom to scarf up, and best of all, it's close to shore and the Copalis Rocks where he can scratch himself and hide behind during the storms, At night he surfaces without the humans noticing and lays against one of the rocks and watches the humans in their beach homes and maybe even watches the TV shows. Often he will drift on down and nestle against another rock. He's the biggest, fattest, largest blue whale on the earth! I have named him TUBBY! (Oh yes, sometimes he belches). The only mystery is how he got there. Blue whales live in the north atlantic. How did he end up in the pacific ocean on the west coast of America? Maybe he got separated from his pod got lost and slipped through the Panama Canal. We may never know for sure."

THUS WAS BORN THE LEGEND OF TUBBY THE WHALE