I Touched a Whale!

[Jackpine]

Well, two, actually!

As some of you know, Janet and I were gone last week on a whale watching trip down the west coast of Baja California. While any description of a whale encounter cannot do it justice, I'll try to give you a bit of the "flavor". If you ever get a chance to do this, don't pass it up!

To begin, we traveled from San Diego by bus down the peninsula. It could have been a long, boring ride, but our trip leader kept things interesting with facts about Baja California along the way. We stopped several times to get the "kinks" out. Here's a picture during one of the stops for a "nature walk" in the desert.



It was very green and lush due to some rare, recent rains. The tall slender "cone" shaped plant in the foreground is a Boojum tree which grows only in the Sonora desert in Baja California. The huge cacti in the background that look like Saguarro cactus are actually a related species known as Cardon and they are even bigger than Saguarros. Other plants are much the same as the ones we have here in the Tucson area.

We had a "rest stop" at Mama Espinosa's, a cafe, motel, cantina (and probably a whole lot more) in El Rosario.



This used to be the "last stop" town before the true desert of Baja California and it used to be nothing but dirt roads the rest of the way. A lot of history of the Baja 1000 is in Mama Espinosa's. She's still alive at 101, and in full possession of a quick mind. She speaks English well and Janet got to meet her.

Our first "whale adventure" was in Scammon's Lagoon at Guerrero Negro. There is a HUGE salt works there operated by Mitsubishi (but 51% owned by the Mexican Government, thankfully), that supplies 20% of the world's salt needs. Scammon's Lagoon was named after a whaling captain who found easy pickings in this place, which is one of three lagoons where the California Gray whales give birth to their young. He and other whalers almost drove the gray whale to extinction, but since being protected, they've made an astonishing comeback.



We got close to several whales on this outing, like this mother and calf, but no one in our boat "touched" one. We did, however, have a chance to study a nesting Osprey near the hotel.





We traveled on to San Ignacio, and from there, took a two hour drive over dirt roads to San Ignacio lagoon where we had two "outings". Janet got to "stroke" a whale calf on the second trip out.



We had to wade out to the boats here, because the water near shore is very shallow and if you don't have water shoes, your feet are going to get cut up pretty badly on the shells and coral.

We traveled back to Guerrero Negro for our final whale visit. This one was incredible! A mother brought her calf to the boat and pushed it up so it could see us and we could see it. They stayed with us for about 10-15 minutes. We had the whales to ourselves for a while but then other boats joined us and the whales visited each one of them too. I was able to touch both the mother and her calf, several times. It really seems as though the mother is simply getting the calf used to boats so that it won't "freak out" during the migration north.







Gray whales have two "nostrils". They typically take three to five breaths before diving and then they stay under for about 5 minutes. An adult female is 45 - 50 feet long and weighs about 35 tons. Because of their slow speed, adults get covered in barnacles and whale lice.

Once in a while they will "spy hop". A behavior where they rise vertically out of the water to just past their eyes and "look around". They will also "body surf", where they "sail" by holding a fluke up in the wind.





Even more impressive though is when they "breach", actually propel themselves about 3/4 out of the water before crashing back in.



The whalers named the gray whale "devil fish" because of their habit of fighting back when harpooned. A smack with the tail flukes could easily sink the small harpooning boats. Personally, I'm sorry they didn't sink them all. Whaling made the Atlantic gray whale extinct in the 18th century and Japan has just about reduced the western Pacific herd to unsustainable numbers. Only the California gray whale seems to be thriving, due to being in a "protected" status. Besides man, their main predator is the Orca.

- Jack