The whales are two weeks out of Baja and two months from Alaska, headed from the bays where they mate and give birth to the feeding grounds where they will live until winter.
Nobody really knows why.
Though a pretty good pair of binoculars enriches the whale-watching experience, all that's required to get a hit of their weird power is patience. Look for the 'V' shaped spouts, maybe 200 yards out. Although they may be cruising at a respectable seven knots, the whales appear to be moving in enormous slow motion. Theirs is a near-monstrous grace. Last weekend at Greyhound Rock, five miles north of Davenport, some friends and I watched a gray execute an Olympian head-breach, thrusting 10 feet of its upper body toward the sky.