February 21, 2021 (2:49 PM Sunday) - Travel day, flying home to Texas. I have been gone for two weeks for this trip. Lots of eating out, sharing time with guests, and I did stay pretty busy with wildlife on this trip. However, I did not film as much as I should have, nor did I write as much as I needed to - so behind on all of it, sorry guys. I am not making good on my word. I frustrate myself because I failed to keep proper records of this adventure. I have had this discussion so many times with myself. Talking about it and doing it are two very different things. Sometimes you come back from spending all day on the water and the last thing you want to do is write or record yourself, but I will get better at it. Ok, enough with what is going on in my head, on to the blog…
On our first day out, we ran into this baby humpback whale breaching over and over. It was such a happy baby, enjoying being alive.
Our mako trip went so well; I am very proud of it. We encountered makos every day we were out on the ocean. On day one, the mako only stayed for around 20 minutes, not a lengthy encounter, but enough for everyone to see it and get excited about seeing more makos. It was a small shark, about 3 feet long, super cute. On our second day, we had a mako show up about 20 minutes into chumming, a record for me. This shark stayed with us for about 45 minutes before it left. I think it was intimidated, because it was really tiny.
After that, we had two blue sharks show up about 3 hours later. Now that is a typical wait for oceanic sharks. We swam with them for about an hour, but finally had to call it a day. Conditions started getting worse, so we were forced to leave. Blue sharks are amazing sharks, they are very bold and will come in and stay for extended periods of time. It is a species shark divers dream of encountering. Very photogenic and not shy at all.
On our final day, we began chumming, and about ten minutes into the chum, we noticed a small brown-looking animal swimming towards us. We thought it was a sea lion at first, but it was blowing water out of a spout, so we thought it was a pilot whale. But it was brown; pilot whales are black. Then Fer had a moment when she realized it was a baby sperm whale. We automatically pulled up the chum and went after the whales, hoping for a shot at seeing them underwater.
I managed to snap one image that I am happy with. The rest are terrible due to the bad vis. I still feel so lucky to have spent some time with them. It truly was a dream come true for me.
This was a huge pod of whales, at least 20-30 members strong. They were scattered all over the ocean, hunting, I believe? We were all on fire. For whale encounters, sperm whales are one of the most coveted whales to hopefully encounter.
Of course with that first jump, reality hit hard - the visibility was horrible. We found out that unless we were within 10 feet of the animal, we could not see it. So it made the encounters a bit more intense. Everyone was super gung ho about it and did not mind, but it was always a shock to see this massive animal just appear out the green soup. Sometimes it seemed like the sperm whales were shocked as well. On one encounter one of the whales took a crap and then dove straight down. Our group was left floating next to the muddy water, huge smile on our faces. The pod was mostly females, with a few babies. The babies would stay at the surface while the adults would drop down to the depths, my guess they were hunting. I do not think we encountered any bulls, but there could have possibly been juvenile males there.
The best encounter of the day was when our buddy Roberta swam towards a group of about three sperm whales. She could not see them until they were very close, and when she looked up they were right in front of her. One of the whales had its mouth open, not sure if it did that to show her it’s very lethal pair of teeth or if it already was swimming that way. She filmed the encounter and this big beautiful whale close up. I pulled a frame grab from the clip. Such an impressive predator.
Towards the end of the day while we were following the whales, we saw a mako swimming close to the surface. Officially making it three days in a row that we saw makos. This was such an amazing trip, filled with beautiful wildlife and surprises. It was everything you want from an open ocean adventure off the coast of Baja. Plenty of shark action and whale encounters as a bonus.
Baja always delivers.
A happy happy thank you to all our friends who joined us for this adventure. Big hug until the next one my friends!