Carl Hall:

A pair of humpback whales spent a half hour doing pirouettes last week within 50 yards of a fishing boat as photographers and a video crew recorded the scene.

“That was cool,” Ariel Miller, 11, the youngest passenger aboard the Salty Lady, said when the show was over.

It had been a rather frustrating day at the Farallones, not much going on besides the usual riffraff of western gulls and sea lions. A few speedy Dall’s porpoises finally came along, bow-riding in the late afternoon, just when skipper Roger Thomas turned his boat back toward Sausalito.