We rejoiced too as action presented itself to us in scenes so rapid no one dared venture from our vantage point. First came the birds. Flights of boobies, blue-footed and brown competed with miniscule squadrons of murrelets and even a hummingbird far from the shore. But then the blows appeared. Never did more than ten minutes elapse without a geyser, a twenty-foot plume exhaled by the largest mammals to have ever lived on this earth. First they arrived singly and then in pairs. Mottled blue backs and tiny dorsal fins contrasted markedly with the sleek steel gray skin and larger fins of the second largest whale, the fin. Mothers and calves of both species attested to the perfection of the Gulf for breeding and feeding and raising of young. Camera shutters clicked as the unusual occurred. Our blue whales were "flukers", some of the few who raised their tails high, waterfalls of light trailing off their sleek pointed tips as they initiated a dive.
Suddenly in the distance a dark wave appeared, advancing toward us like a tsunami of sorts. Possibly a mile wide, the swell approached, finally resolving itself into the popcorn-like movements of three hundred or more common dolphins. The water became like broken glass. Light shimmered and reflected off the fractured surface, churned by two-toned bodies seemingly enjoying the stimulation provided by our circling wake. As the day progressed and the temperature rose, we sent our kayaks out to ply the southern shores of Isla del Carmen. Even here the whales found us, cruising in parallel routes with ours.
Our shore-based dinner amphitheater looked out upon the sea as it echoed the pastel pinks and blues of morning. Darkness drew across the sky, punctuated by the lights of distant stars set in patterns from which legends were born.
And at the end of the day the blackness of a nighttime sea sparkled with green bioluminescence.
