Whalewatching: Let's Meet the Grays

© American Cetacean Society

It’s dawn on the San Ignacio lagoon. Your group has chartered a boat and you’re wandering out to see the whales, your motor idling so as not to disturb them. Binoculars and cameras ready, you catch the early morning breeze and inhale the ocean fragrance. Suddenly you see two large objects off the starboard bow. It’s a mother and her newborn calf. Before you have time to raise your camera, the pair is beside your craft. A glistening eye stares up at you as if to say, “How are you?”

In the winter months on the Baja Peninsula, this scenario is repeated hundreds of times as record numbers of whale-watchers visit the beautiful and tranquil lagoons of the Baja to commune with one of nature’s great wonders, the Eastern Pacific gray whale.

Enclosed and protected from commercial development, the three principal lagoons on the peninsula are the whale’s mating grounds, delivery rooms and nurseries. Here, after giving birth, the mothers will nurse their young until the offspring are strong enough to make the arduous 5,000-mile journey up to their summer feeding grounds in the Bering/Chukchi and Beaufort seas between Alaska and Siberia. There they will spend their summer feeding and mating before returning south to start the cycle all over again.

The gray whale's seemingly natural affection for humans is on full display in the lagoons. New mothers are proud to show off their infants to the human visitors who are all too eager to touch them and snap their pictures for posterity. It's an amazing experience, say the thousands of tourists who have had the privilege to see this wonder of nature.

Baja lagoon (background photo): Grays are among the most affectionate animals on Earth, as these Baja visitors (inset photos) are discovering. Click on the inset photos above to view other whale scenes.

Breaching Whales Make Powerful Waves

It takes tremendous power for a gray whale to thrust its 30-ton body out of the water into the air. Those who have seen a breaching whale will never forget it. Breaching, like spyhopping, is a curious behavior. It doesn't have any apparent purpose; it just looks fun. Maybe that's the point.