From the National Geographic Sea Bird in Baja California

La Florida to La Entrada

Last night we moved to a different place a few miles south of Boca the Soledad, and today we woke up in La Florida, a gorgeous area were female gray whales and their calves swim between sand dunes and mangroves. We boarded the Zodiacs shortly after breakfast and soon were watching numerous blows around us. The warm early morning light contrasted with the cool breeze, and great photo opportunities abounded everywhere. We were following some mother/baby pairs when suddenly a presumably young male started breaching; after the initial surprise, we were all thrilled and amazed by such a display of strength and power as the whale continued breaching high above the water over and over again! Breaching is something amazing to watch and we are always left wondering the reason what causes the whale to do it; among possible explanations are some sort of communication, dislodging of parasites and play. In this particular case, with so many females around our young male, we shouldn’t discount some showing-off…

After a morning of whale watching, the National Geographic Sea Bird sailed south through the Hull Canal under the expert hand of Alejandro Camacho, our pilot. Snowy and great egrets, white ibises, marbled godwits, and many other birds were seen on the shores and on the red-and-white mangroves. We eventually left the canal behind, Alejandro headed back to his hometown of Puerto Lopez Mateos, and we reached La Entrada, as the gap between Magdalena and Santa Margarita islands is known; many gray whales congregated there and we watched them as we exited Magdalena Bay and entered the open Pacific. And as we sailed south and the sun slowly approached the western horizon, groups of long-beaked common dolphins and a few humpback whales (including one that breached several times!) were seen, putting an end to another great day in Baja California.