This blog is from my travel journal. The signal in Puerto San Carlos where we visit the grey whales is horrible so I was not able to do much while I was there. But I am back in Texas, playing catch up on blogs and images and emails. I wanted to share moments and memories from our second trip of the season…
February 7, 2022 - Day one of our grey whale expedition. The adventure begins. We are in Puerto San Carlos, with the next four days to be spent seeking out grey whales off Magdalena Bay.
We headed out in two boats; Mari took one boat with the girls and our buddy Jay, I took another boat out with the guys. We split the boats up into two groups to keep our numbers small. I prefer to have only four people in the boats with us so that there is plenty of room to lean over and play with the whales when they approach.
Eva and Lori are new to the wildlife world, but are now very addicted. Welcome to our Normal Ladies.
We left the dock super early and headed out in search of adventure. Damn, I love saying that. San Carlos during this time of year is chilly. It is the winter season, and the mornings are cold. So we were all bundled up as we motored across the Bay. We snapped images of the rising sun as we headed out.
It took us an hour to get to the area where the grey whales hang out. Once we arrived, we enjoyed the sight and sounds of whale blows scattered all around. The sound of a whale coming up for a breath of air is genuinely one of the most incredible sounds you will ever hear in nature. Hearing several blows all around you - there are no words for how epic that is, love that sound!
We hung out with the whales for the rest of the day, patiently waiting for a flirty female to approach our boat. After about thirty minutes, we had whales swim up and begin rolling and rubbing up against our boat. The excitement you see with everyone on the boat, including me, is the best.
I love how fired up everyone gets when a whale approaches. The boys dropped their cameras in, snapping away as the whales came in for a rub. On Mari’s boat, the girls squealed with excitement. Yes, there were a lot of girls screaming on her boat, probably on mine too, BUT, I chose to ignore those sounds to protect the innocent. Lol
We played with the whales for a long time. The whales were swimming from boat to boat, seeking out attention. For some reason, they enjoyed visiting Mari’s boat compared to ours. My guess is the girls were more handsy with the whales than we were. There was more focus on snapping underwater images of them than playing with them on our boat. So I guess the whales got bored and went back to them for more love.
In the afternoon, our Captain spotted many birds near the surface, about two miles away. Signs that there might be a baitball, so he asked us if we wanted to check it out, and off we went. We picked up Jay from Mari’s boat and headed out to the open ocean.
Diving pelicans, picking off sardines from the baitball.
We got closer and ended up motoring into a superpod of common dolphins—tens of thousands of dolphins were in the area hunting sardines. We tried a few jumps with them, but they kept their distance and dropped down deep, too deep for us at least. We could see them, but they were not close enough to try and snap images of them.
So we just enjoyed the topside show they gave us. It was a lot of fun trying to photograph them. Snapping jumping images of dolphins is always a challenge, you get a card full of crappy images. But every once in a while you get lucky and snap a gem.
For scenes like this, video always tells a better story of what we are experiencing. Plus with video, you can capture the sounds that thousands of dolphins make is fire! There are so many dolphins, you can actually hear their underwater whistles while standing on the boat.
After we left the dolphins, we arrived at the baitball, and jumped in to see what what was left of it. It was still a nice-sized baitball of sardines, with about 6 to 7 sea lions hunting them. It was a static ball, and the sea lions were extremely friendly with us and kept coming up to our cameras. The water was green, the visibility was not great and it was freezing cold - but damn was it fun! We stayed there for about 45 minutes and then returned to the Bay to finish up our day with the whales.
Overall it was a fantastic first day in and on the water. We are already looking forward to what tomorrow brings.
Thank you guys for reading.