Cabos San Lucas, Gorda Banks & San Jose de Cabos
23 degree North Latitude

We shall consider today as starting last night when a few guests and staff turned eyes skyward on the open part of the bridge deck – our star-watching platform. Venus was in fine form, as were a zillion stars in the Milky Way. Our Naturalist pointed out major constellations which looked a bit different than when viewed at latitudes further north. After all, we are at 23 degrees south – the Tropic of Cancer.

This morning found us approaching Land’s End near Cabo San Lucas. A breaching Humpback Whale disturbed that view, if you can call that a disturbance. We did get back to the rugged rocks of Land’s End just in time for the best morning light. Postcard photos could be taken by any and all with a camera.

Spinner Dolphins were the featured guest of the morning with an extended stay as bow riders and spinning acrobats. Even Naturalist staff that have spent considerable amounts of time in this area have seldom seen this species. What is even more amazing is that they stayed with us for an extended period of time. The Spinner dolphins are far different that the Bottle-nose and Common dolphins seen in the last few days. Spinners’ are smaller, almost black, and have thinner bodies, narrow fins and tails, and sleeker looking tail flukes than the other dolphins. They Spinners had no sooner headed astern of us when Bottle-nose dolphins came to the National Geographic Sea Bird for the bow riding experience.

At San Jose del Cabo part of our group opted to shop in town and part went bird watching in the estuary. The bird group turned up about 30 species of birds in just about two hours. High points were immature Green Heron, Osprey catching and eating a fish, Purple Moorhens and Black-necked stilts.

No sooner had we left port when Humpback Whales were sighted off the bow. There were four whales, probably three males and one female, engaging in what marine mammal researchers term as reproductive behavior. The males were making themselves look big and jockeying for access to the female. We watched until dark.
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Dr William Gilly, an expert on Humboldt Squid, came aboard for the remainder of our expedition. He told us about his work during our evening recap. Dr Gilly’s work is one example of Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic’s intentions to support oceanic research and offer guests the opportunity to participate whenever possible.

After dinner we had the good fortune to listen to Susan Shillinglaw, a Steinbeck scholar, discussing the travels and work of John Steinbeck and Dr. Ed Ricketts in the Gulf of California.