CRUISES: Baja's Gentle Giants and Nature’s Great Parade

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

San Diego falls rapidly astern of the Pacific Northwest Explorer. The 44 passengers aboard the Exploration Cruise Lines ship wander into the lounge for their first safety briefing on the ocean. "There are three possible emergencies at sea," says Captain Kevin Hill, "Fire, abandon ship and man overboard. In the first two, we’ll you what to do. For the third you don't have to do anything – unless," he grins at his passengers, "unless you happen to he the man overboard.''

This breaks the ice. The passengers laugh. The ship rolls slightly. It has a shallow 7 1/2 ft. draft allowing it to sail close to any coastline but this sometimes gives more sense of motion than passengers find on larger cruise ships. The ship rolls again.

"I like passengers to take their seasickness medication early before they get into trouble," says Hill. "I'm going to take mine now." The audience laughs uneasily for a moment then moves fast. The intercom is calling, "Whales sighted directly ahead!"

Special Expeditions has done it again: whale sightings in the first hour of leaving San Diego, even though the ship has 14 days for its odyssey, a circumnavigation of the Baja Peninsula to enter the world of the gentle giants, the most magnificent animals ever created by God.

The Gray Whale, a silhouette against the setting sun,\ swimming 100 feet ahead of the bow, blows a 15 ft. high jet of spray into the afternoon sky. The water vapor sparkles like Christmas lights in the rays of the sun. The snorting noise rolls across half a mile of ocean. The sea slides by. The whale moves on in its strange timeless voyage, its mysterious migration -- a 14,000 miles round trip from its home in the Bering Sea to its breeding grounds in the lagoons of Baja California.

The gray creature ahead breathes twice more at ten second intervals then the fluke lazily comes up and she slides into the sea. She will travel about 70-100 miles this day, at four to five knots, a speed kept up for about 20 hours. Some authorities say she navigates by direct vision and mention the whale's spy hoping. Then the head sticks out of the water vertically as if the great beast is getting its bearings. Another theory suggests memory - after all the brain of the Gray Whale developed 30 million years ago, long before that of primitive man's. Other scientists maintain that the whale's elaborate sonar creates a route by echo location.

The migration instinct may now be set genetically but probably at the beginning it was based on the reality that the whale's feeding grounds in the far north became blocked with ice each year and though the whales barely feed on their long migration south they are at least reaching a warmer environment where calves born with little insulation can survive. This great migration spans 50 degrees of latitude. The Gray Whales swim in pods of up to 16 members, or like the one ahead now, as single individuals.

The light fades. The whale waves its fluke as if in farewell -- and disappears into the indigo deep.

Although whales are the attraction on this particular trip, the circumnavigation of Baja by Sven-Olof Lindblad's Special Expeditions (now Lindblad Expeditions 800-397-3348) is a veritable naturalist's delight. Lindblad, son of Lars-Eric the famous adventurer, was himself an East African explorer and wildlife photographer before he formed his own company to bring the outdoors to Americans -- but in comfort. His 143 foot-long chartered ship carries a crew of fifteen, with five officers, and a ship's doctor to care for up to 66 passengers. Additionally he provides on each voyage an expedition leader, a guest speaker and six naturalists.

One of them is Keith Shackleton, a wildlife painter and relative of the famous explorer, who is giving a talk to the passengers now. lie clearly loves whales. "All. life started in the sea," he says, "then some forms moved on to land. One warm blooded animal decided there wasn't much future there. It went back to the sea and became the perfect advanced marine animal. Whales are in some respects our equals," he says, "level-pegging with us in terms of intellect, understanding and ability. But in other ways they are superior. They don't plot things, they don't build things - they don't have hands to get them into trouble."

Baby whales, of course, can get into trouble in cold seas. As if sensing this, the pregnant females set off first on the migration. Yet on the second day suddenly two whales are seen fifty feet dead of the ship. One whale is much smaller than the other and is being kept close to the surface by the body of the larger one. It's a baby whale born on the migration and now required to swim on this long dangerous journey. At times the baby whale seems to struggle to get to its air supply at the surface but always the mother is there sometimes supporting it as both whales swim on and on and on to their destiny.

That sighting is barely over when another announcement sends the enthusiasts scampering upstairs. A school of about three hundred dolphins has decided to put on an oceanarium show to equal any in the world of circus. An arena four times the size of a football field is a roiling mass of dancing dolphins. Like antelopes bonging across the African veldt, like skiers flashing down the side of a mountain, the porpoise leap across the ship's path, dozens in the air at any given moment.

It’s as if Mother Nature has lifted a curtain on a great spectacle and the dolphins are there to warm up the audience. Half a dozen flash in front of the bow of the ship and start to ride its pressure wave. It seems they're saying, "You've seen the opening chorus of the great parade, now watch the acrobats."

Those acrobats perform at times of their own pleasing but Special Expeditions chooses when to send in the clowns, the seals -- by bringing the ship to their beaches.

Three particular colonies captivate the passengers on the Baja trip: the Northern Elephant Seals of West San Benito Island, the California sea lions of San Pedro Martir Island, and the sea lions on the craggy cliffs of Los Islotes. Although the latter display is an exciting example of how close the 100 ton ship with its shallow draft can get to some of the rocky islets in the Sea of Cortez, and several hundred harking sea lions do put on quite a performance, it's the Northern Elephant Seals who win the acting accolades.

After a mile saunter across the desolate island, the passengers look down on a rocky beach where 20 sleek seals lie in the sun with their newly horn calves. Offshore swims the hull to the harem. (Male elephant seals don't establish a territory, they merely maintain dominance over a group of females. Successfully so because four percent of the males carry out eighty percent of the mating.) Thus this bull paddles lazily in the sun.

He's not so lazy a moment later when a young male attempts to slip in amongst the females. The bull is outraged. He comes out of the water a menacing 8000 lbs. in weight, and is rearing up to show his height -- adult males grow to 20 feet long – to send the intruder on his way. The bull grunts and roars through that strange pendulous proboscis that hangs into his mouth, then returns to his swimming, and another performance in the great parade is over and another memory made.

But stage shows need singers and who better in the spectacle of Baja than the birds. They don't all sing. Some, the shearwaters, swoop down on the waves like trapeze artists; some, the frigate birds, wheel in the skies like ballet dancers; some, the boobies, brood on sun-scorched ledges like Shakespearean performers preparing soliloquies; some, the Bonaparte gulls, float lazily on the water like absent minded actors who have forgotten their lines.

Those then are the memories of Baja. Those and seaport villages like San Carlos where shrimp boats bustle in the sun. And resorts like Cabo San Lucas dragged, at the tip of Baja, into the 21st Century by sport fishermen seeking marlin and hedonists the golden tan. And the beach city of La Paz, with Jose Luis Gonzalez and his Mariachi Superior band welcoming Lindblad's little group to the capital, the Province of Baja South.

But always there's the whales. Humpbacks, Finbacks, sometimes the mighty Blue, but always the Gray.

And the Gray Whale gives an encore to Nature's great parade: The ship swings west into the setting sun. Its inflatable dingies, the Humbers, haven't seen many whales in the lagoons this January. In a few moments the ship will pass through the narrow gap between Magdalena and Isla Santa Margarita and be on its way leaving the whale's ancestral breeding grounds and returning to the open sea.

Dr. Robbins Barstow, the cofounder of the Connecticut Cetacean Society, an internationally known figure in whale conservation and the guest speaker on the voyage, is on the bridge deck chatting to a photographer. Suddenly he leans forward arid rubs his eyes. In the gathering dusk a plume of vapor shoots skywards, and another. And another! Barstow calls out, "Whales to starboard. Five, no Six, no ..."

His voice tails off. He grasps the rail with look of utter contentment. Eight, ten, no twice that many spouts blow around him. He is seeing my the vanguard of the Gray Whale migration enter Magdalena lagoon. And as the ship turns south, there, off to the north, is a further series of plumes of vapor.

"This is it," he exclaims happily, "This is the great parade."

Another whale blows in front of the ship, the snorting noise carrying clearly across the ocean in the developing darkness.

But what's this? A second tiny jet of water vapor shoots into the air and a second smaller fluke flutters beside the larger one.

Once more the ship has a mother and calf in front of it but now the tired two are at. the end of their journey. The photographer beside Barstow waves to the baby whale and exclaims, "I’m sure that's the one we saw near San Diego. Anyway, that's what I'm going to believe. That our little one made it."

Rubbing his heard, Robbins Barstow smiles. He seems equally thrilled by the romantic notion that they're seeing the same baby whale.

"I was once afraid," says Barstow, "that whale watching might become a luxury, an indulgence of wealthy upper class Americans. The thoughts bothered me. But all over the world I've discovered that Cetaceans have a universal almost mystical appeal. I found this so in Africa, in South America and even in China.

He rubs the salt spray from his lace and continues: "Indeed it's the representatives of the Third World who have taken a position that whales are not an exploitable resource for hunters but part of the common heritage of all humankind. I've sometimes thought that whales might be considered emissaries of peace from the Creator and that peoples who might otherwise be enemies might be united by a common appreciation of those living creatures on our planet."

The mother and baby whale enter the lagoon and disappear into the darkness of the night.