When we rounded the tip of the point we caught sight of a huge cloud of birds circling and diving in the water. There were thousands of birds and they were continuously diving. We would typically see eight pelicans hit the water at the same time. Mike Chin started moaning at the sight of this. Is he scared of something? What does this kettle of birds portend? Mike was unresponsive so I asked Penny, who was sharing a double kayak with Mike, what his problem was. It turns out a kettle of diving birds like this means that the fishing will be particularly good, and Mike was desperate to get a hook and line into the water here! We paddled around a rock and into a beautiful little protected cove and decided to land here for the afternoon and evening. Mike jumped back in his boat and padded out to fish with the birds.
Mike Chin came back a little later to tell us that there was a “ball” of bait fish inside our little cove. Joe Petolino and I put on our dive gear and went snorkeling to see what this was like. What we saw actually did look like a huge ball, or at least the bottom half of one, made out of what looked like living mercury hanging in the water. It was made of zillions of little fish! There were so many of them that you could not see more than a few feet into the ball, and they cast a dark shadow on the bottom. As we swam up to the ball a dent would appear in it and the fish would all pull away from us. Then it would close up behind us again. Occasionally the “void” of clear water around me would make contact with another void. In the center of each of these I would find a piece of kelp drifting in the water. Just in case this was a predator waiting to pounce on them, the fish stayed away from anything drifting by. When I dove down into the water, the void around me would follow me and then the sun would go out as they closed over above me. Near the surface I could see that there was a gap between the surface and the start of the dense ball of fish, but there were a few brave fish swimming in this area. These brave souls were probably rewarded by being eaten by a bird!
If I sat still for a while the fish would relax and get a little closer to me. But if I made a sudden movement or blew noisily out my snorkel, all the fish within my sight would all turn at once and catch the sun! Up close I could see that they had a green stripe on their sides, a transparent gut, bright silver cheeks with red gills showing when their mouths gaped open. When they opened their mouths it distorted the shape of their heads, like little sharks. Sometimes they would all turn in the same direction and gape their mouths in unison.
I have often wanted to catch a glimpse of diving birds under the water from my kayak. But the angle of the light and the turbidity of the water usually combine to prevent me from seeing a grebe or a cormorant when they dive. But today I saw grebes swimming through the bait ball! The first time I saw them I thought I was seeing a large predatory fish. Two small openings appeared in the side of the ball and torpedoes of mercury zoomed out and turned up towards the surface. When they broke the surface I realized they were birds. The oil on their feathers makes them repel water, so they dive in a little bubble of air tight around their bodies and this makes them look like quicksilver!
The cove we were in was beautiful, the bait ball and the furious activity of the fish were exciting. Penny asked us “Have we gotten to the boring part yet”?