Mike in the Wild

You'd think that joining a whale-watching tour with the specific objective of spotting a blue whale would be a slam dunk success.  After all, the blue whale is not just any whale: it's the largest animal that has ever existed in the history of Earth.  That's right, it's larger than the brontosaurus and the tyrannosaurus rex and every other dinosaur that ever roamed on land or swam in the sea.  So how could you possibly miss one? Unfortunately all whale species faced the same fate of near extinction due to rampant hunting that lasted well into the first half of the twentieth century.  As a result of a global effort to stop the slaughter, many populations have rebounded; today there may be over ten thousand blue whales navigating throughout our planet's oceans.  In the eastern Pacific there are over a thousand, at least one of which was my target off the coast of San Diego. Like many whales, blue whales migrate great distances from feeding grounds in cold...