News Page Eighty
Thanks to whale, men have big fish story!
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{below} Joe Bellies shown is his Kayak with the nose of a whale coming out of the water. The whale emerges again, Bell is shown with john DeVan, who captured the images with his digital camera. Both men saw the whale in the Sandbridge area of Virginia Beach.
Virginia Beach, As fish stories go, Joe Bell's is a whale of a tale. While paddling his kayak off Sandbridge beach easily Friday, Bell had the close encounter of a lifetime. For John DeVan, it was the photograph of a lifetime.
Just after 7 a.m., DeVan was having a cup of coffee in his summer home in the 2800 block of Sandfiddler road, where he was recuperating from foot surgery. The Virginia Beach electric engineer was looking out the window her saw "a real big something come to the surface." about 100 yards off shore. DeVan grabbed his new Canon digital camera, attached a zoom lens and started scanning the water.
Then it came up again, spurting a big plume of water and swimming northward. That's when Devan spotted Bell, the kayaker, paddling southward. "It appeared to me they were going to interact right in front my cottage," spotted Bell, the kayaker, paddling southward." "It appeared to me they were going to intersect right in from t of my cottage," said DeVan, 49. He began shooting a rapid fire sequence of pictures.
"And boom, I saw it, and I heard my wife gasp," Devan said. HIs Pictures captured the whale bursting out of the water within arm's reach of bell. The shots even caught a fish in mid air, escaping certain death in the whale's mouth. Bell, a 55 year old chesapeake salesman, had been visiting Sandbridge for 50 years, but he's never seen a whale there until Friday, when he could have reached out and touched one.
"I must have a strong heart, otherwise I would have had a heart attack," he said. After the whale dived back below, Bell began paddling furiously, "I just wanted to get out of his range.." Bell said it happened so fast, he couldn't have taken a picture himself even if he had a camera. He said he might not have believed it if it weren't for DeVans timing.
LAter, Devan sent his daughter to the beach to hail Bell. The kayaker accepted an invitation to the cottage to see the pictures, which DeVan had already uploaded to his laptop. Bell "was a little shook up," DeVan said. "He almost couldn't bear to look at it." Bell said he had spotted sometime g coming out of the water earlier during his paddle, but he didn't think it was a whale because he'd never seen one in the area. Officials at the Virginia Marine Science Museum said it's likely your photos capture a small small humpback whale "lunge feeding" beneath a school of fish. WHile such whales are unusual in these waters at this time of year, it's not unheard of.
DeVan said he had never seen anything like it since he began visiting Sandbridge in 1987. He said he plans to turn the picture into posters, which he might hang in tow Sandbridge restaurants. He also sent Bell a copy.
By Jason Skog/The Virginian Pilot
Chriss Tyree/The Virginian Pilot took bottom picture
. John Devan Took the top 3 pictures.
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