Humans and whales meet in Mexico’s Magdalena Bay
MAGDALENA BAY, Mexico — Just off the bow of our 22foot 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.
“Woo-hoo!” I yelp. (Sometimes I can’t help myself.)
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 scissor-sharp 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.
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.
A refuge from the sea
I was last in Magdalena Bay 22 years ago when my family and I piloted our 32-foot sailboat from San Diego 850 miles down Baja’s wild Pacific Coast and into the Sea of Cortez. Most of the huge bay was relatively untouched by human development then.
It has changed little, still lined with sand dunes and mangroves, its skies filled with pelicans and frigate birds, its waters with sea lions and clams.
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 whale-watching rides and he was the only fisherman in town who spoke good English.
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!’”
These days, his son is an affable and enterprising businessman. Book a whale-watching outing with his company online and he’ll also book you into his family’s little hotel, Hotel Isabela.
Don’t expect the Hilton. Just to find the place, you have to stop by the whale-tour office in town and someone will lead you through a maze of dirt streets and ragtag cinder-block homes typical of rural Mexico. Out to sea
At 7 a.m. we meet in the restaurant before our day of whale-watching. Captain Marco sits and 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 midFebruary. Around far-flung corners of the bay there might be as many as 250 whales, he says, but government regulations bar whalewatching boats from areas where mother whales typically take their calves to nurse.
I’ve chosen his outfit because online reviews said the boat captains respect the whales. But I’m also concerned about a reviewer who said she had seen whales bloodied by boat propellers on Mag Bay.
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 22foot skiff. Surprisingly, accidents are rare.
Diamonds on the water
Captain Juan is at the helm of my boat. Captain Marco’s niece, 13-year-old 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.
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.
We see myriad tail 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. Whoa, did that just happen? “Bonita! Bonita!” chants Merary, calling whales to us.