Magdalena Bay, Baja California

Black and White

In today’s political and economic climate not many things are perceived to be clearly black and white. Of course twice a day (on most days) dark night gives way to the light of day. For those of us who opted to get up VERY early this morning, we were on shore at Isla Magdalena to witness daylight overcome the dark. Photographers of all stripes left their comfortable bunks on National Geographic Sea Bird behind in order to capture the golden textures of sand dunes painted in magical golden light. And just like that the blackness was replaced by white light.

Later in the morning we pulled anchor and headed out to the Pacific Ocean through the opening known as La Entrada. Long-beaked common dolphins escorted the ship through the passage and then we were out in the open sea. Sometimes there is no better way to have a magical marine mammal encounter then to start a lecture, and today this proved to be especially true. We were only half way through our lecture discussing predation of gray whales by killer whales, when the Expedition Leader Sue Perin announced that black and whites (code for killer whales) had been sighted off the bow. In true Lindblad Expedition style the presentation was immediately abandoned and we all scrambled for our binoculars and cameras and then on to the forward deck.

In this area, sightings of killer whales are extremely rare. With literally decades of experience around the Baja Peninsula amongst the staff, we can only tally a few encounters with our black and white friends. To make this sighting exceptionally unusual and memorable, there were somewhere between 15 and 20 individuals spread out, slowly moving to the north. We suspected (and images confirm) that these largest members of the dolphin family were feeding at depth on the abundant Humbolt squid (Dosidicus gigas), we encountered earlier washed up dead on sand dollar beach.

At recap our undersea specialist Carlos Navarro was almost visibly shaking. He thought that he recognized one of the killer whales from an encounter he remembered from almost 4 years ago with black and whites on the Eastern side of the Baja Peninsula, high in the San Jose Channel. Sure enough, further comparison of images showed a positive match between an adult female that Carlos had photographed on June 26, 2006 and the same killer whale photographed today. Interestingly this female had a young calf with her in both instances. Further sleuthing revealed that this very animal was first sighted and photographed in 1984 in Canal de las Ballenas, far north in the Gulf of California. Here was the same individual, 26 years later and several hundred miles from the original sighting! The sea often reveals her patterns and truths as black and white facts over the span of many moons!