Windsurfer Collides With Gray Whale Near Crissy Field, Video Goes Viral

The stretch of San Francisco Bay just off Crissy Field Beach, where windsurfers routinely thread past freighters with the Golden Gate Bridge framing every run, turned unexpectedly dangerous on March 24. Eric Kramers was completing what he described as his "last run back" when a gray whale broke the surface directly in his path. He had no time to react, and the collision sent him airborne from his board.

Kramers had already slowed down after spotting whales earlier in his session, but the whale, he said, "just popped up right in front of me." He was not injured, and the whale swam away appearing unharmed. The video, captured from at least two angles including one with the Golden Gate Bridge visible in the background, racked up millions of views online. Kramers later posted on Instagram: "It was a whale of a day," urging fellow water sports enthusiasts to be cautious.

The encounter was not random bad luck. At the time of the collision, an estimated six gray whales were present in San Francisco Bay, part of an unseasonably early migration that brought animals into bay waters as far back as February 2026. That early arrival alongside the Bay's dense recreational and commercial vessel traffic has alarmed marine scientists.

Moe Flannery of the California Academy of Sciences warned that anyone on the water, from high-speed ferries to recreational windsurfers, could inadvertently strike a whale. She emphasized the importance of recognizing gray whales on sight and maintaining constant vigilance to reduce collision risk.

In the weeks surrounding the Kramers collision, four gray whales were found dead in San Francisco Bay within approximately two weeks. The first, a 42-foot adult female, was discovered floating near the Golden Gate Bridge on March 17 with injuries consistent with a vessel strike; her carcass was towed to Angel Island State Park for necropsy. By March 28 through 30, three more dead whales had appeared, with The Marine Mammal Center confirming the count doubled over a single weekend.

Last year's numbers set an alarming baseline. In 2025, the Bay Area recorded 26 whale strandings, 21 of them gray whales, with nine classified as suspect or probable vessel strikes, making it the deadliest year for gray whales in the Bay Area in 25 years.

The population context makes each of those deaths count more heavily. The eastern North Pacific gray whale population peaked at roughly 27,000 animals in 2016 but has since fallen to an estimated 11,700 to 14,500 individuals, the lowest count since the early 1970s and the third-lowest on record. NOAA declared an Unusual Mortality Event for the species in December 2018, and NOAA Fisheries biologist David Weller has cautioned that environmental changes may be testing the population's historic ability to rebound.

Weeks before the Kramers incident, on February 6, The Marine Mammal Center and the San Francisco Harbor Safety Committee launched "Whale Smart," a pilot training program for commercial vessel operators, including ferry services, aimed at cutting collision risks and improving real-time reporting. Scientists and conservationists have since renewed calls for similar outreach to recreational users and for voluntary speed restrictions in whale-active areas during peak migration, questions that agencies and program managers have not yet answered publicly.

The Marine Mammal Center's Cetacean Conservation Biology Team photo-identified more than 35 individual gray whales in SF Bay in 2025 alone. The free Whale Alert app lets any boater or paddler log sightings in real time, feeding data into vessel management systems that can generate temporary speed advisories. Scientists urge slowing down and keeping distance whenever whales are in the area, the same precautions Kramers had already taken before the whale surfaced beneath him anyway.