It was a long June day, and I ran my boat WaveWalker with passengers onboard and my ever-faithful crew member Capt. Tiffany Vague, along the coast to a lush and healthy kelp bed near La Conchita.

Once we got lines in the water, calico bass were biting well enough to keep us interested, and the great coastal scenery was a wonderful bonus.

After an hour of fishing, I spotted a gray whale spouting just a couple hundred yards away. I called everyone’s attention to it, as it was definitely late in the season for a gray whale sighting.

Soon we realized it was swimming right toward us, and a bit faster than they normally travel, as if it had a need for speed. As it came right next to us, it stopped, rolled partway on its side and gave us a long searching look.

Apparently, we passed muster because it then moved past us and burrowed itself right into the midst of the thick kelp forest next to us. That struck as a strangely curious thing to do, and my thoughts went to the possibility of a pod of hungry orca on its tale making it want to hide.

I looked all around but saw no sign of trouble for the whale.

Then curiously, the whale began doing rapid half-rolls back and forth, twisting and contorting and moving forward and back. It kept this up for like 20 minutes while we speculated on the possible reasons.

One passenger worried it might get tangled up in the kelp and would require rescue. It was a sizable gray whale, and I assured the worrier that the big cetacean could rip up the kelp bed if it needed to.

Tiffany let out a laugh and loudly declared, “It’s scratching an itch with that kelp!”

That made perfect sense, and we all burst out laughing and cheering for the itchy whale as it lingered longer than a Santa Barbara summer solstice sunset.

Finally, it felt sufficiently relieved of the pesky itch and gracefully slipped out of the kelp bed and moved off up the coast toward its summer destination way up north. We waved goodbye to the sated critter and went back to fishing.

Interestingly, all the churning activity in the kelp bed had excited the calico bass and the bite turned on hotter than a summer sun. The fishing action was wild.

Tiffany laughed again and said, “Wait a minute … did that whale really scratch an itch, or was it doing us a favor by exciting the fish?”

My thought was, it was definitely an itch, but the excited fish part was the resulting blessing.