Migrating whales spend winter in Baja
MAGDALENA BAY, Mexico — Just off the bow of our 22-foot open boat — what Baja fishermen call a “panga” — a whale spout erupts with an adrenaline spiking “fwooosh.” Seawater jets into the air, catching the brilliant Mexican sun in a fleeting rainbow.
As the gray whale’s barnacle-armored back slices the water less than 20 feet away, in the near distance my eye takes in a scissorsharp line of barren coastal peaks. A thought occurs: This is a bit like visiting another planet, where alien life-forms seem just as interested in us as we in them.
Indeed, for a visitor from Seattle, the burnt-sienna crags of coastal Baja seem like another world compared with the Pacific Northwest’s emerald and gray coastline. And the whales that surround our boat — not fleeing, often lolling just beneath us, sometimes surfacing so close they can look us in the eye — are intriguing visitors from a watery world.
I was on a daylong adventure on this wide and wild 30-mile-long bay on the lower reaches of Baja California. To this coast, after one of the longest migrations of any mammal on Earth — more than 5,000 miles each way — as many as 20,000 gray whales from cold Alaska seas come every winter to mate and have their calves.
Magdalena Bay is one of the places where curious humans pay homage to them. And it seems the curiosity is mutual: It’s common here for whales to come right up to boats, sometimes letting humans pat them on the head.
Online research had led me to a locally run tour service, Magdalena Bay Whales, managed by 40-year-old “Captain Marco” (full name: Crispin Marco Antonio Mendoza Lopez). His fisherman father, Crispin Mendoza, 78, was the first local who started taking tourists out to see gray whales here in 1970. He got the job because gringo visitors had begun asking for whalewatching rides and he was the only fisherman in town who spoke English well.
He has come to be known as the Whale Whisperer.
“I feel like I can talk to the whales, and I feel they can listen to me,” he told me over dinner one night. “I talk to the whales like I talk to my little puppy at home: ‘Come on, baby, let’s play!’ ”
Captain Marco tells us about Mag Bay’s whales.
“We started to see whales at the end of December, and this year we see a little bit more than the usual. In the area we can go, there are 25 to 30 whales right now.”
It’s late January when I visit. He says we’re too early to see many calves, which usually appear more around mid-February. Around far-flung corners of the bay there might be as many as 250 whales, he says, but government regulations bar whale-watching boats from areas where mother whales typically take their calves to nurse.
Captain Marco tells us that regulations require boats to stay about 98 feet away from whales. U.S. standards in areas such as the San Juan Islands require boats to stay 600 feet away.
“If whales approach us or want to interact with us, that’s allowed,” Marco explained.
Currently in his area, 32 boats have permits to take tourists whale watching. Of every 10 tours, he says, maybe seven have whales come right up to the boat.
That’s an adult whale of 35 to 45 feet, or a calf of 8 to 12 feet, getting friendly with a 22-foot skiff. Surprisingly, accidents are rare.
Captain Juan is at the helm of my boat. In another boat, Captain Marco welcomes a family from Los Angeles. Captain Marco’s 13-year-old niece, Merary, accompanies us as we launch from the edge of a mangrove lagoon at 8:30 a.m.
The sun, still low in the east, glints diamonds off the serene bay. Far shores are lost in mist. Pelicans, a blue heron and a white egret perch among mangrove branches.
Captain Juan soon gooses the outboard to put the panga up on plane. We race the other boat across the bay in water shallow enough that I can see waves cast spidery shadows on the sandy bottom. The air is cool; I’m thankful I’ve been warned to wear layers.
We pause to inspect sandy Isla de Patos, with thousands of pelicans and cormorants clustered ashore, then circle a channel marker where we bark back and forth at tawny sea lions who bask on its base.
We see another tourist boat with visitors in orange life vests. No life vests are offered on my boat, nor is there any discussion of safety.
At 9:05, near the bay’s entrance, Juan cries out. I spy a fluked tail breaking the water a half-mile ahead. Merary points to the spray of whale spouts off to our left. For the next three hours, we slowly cruise the mouth of the bay as whales appear, some in the distance, some right next to our boat. At one point around us I count six more pangas with tourists. None are chasing whales at high speed. Most maintain their distance unless the whales approach them.
We see myriad tale flips, we see lumbering giants loafing beneath our boat, we see a distant breach — and for one dramatic moment a whale thrusts its colossal, barnacled beak up over the transom of our panga, as if to give Captain Juan a big wet kiss.