Sea of Cortez
Unusual weather greeted us in La Paz yesterday: rain! Today, the first full day of our trip, skies remained overcast but temperatures warm and dry and, most blessed of all, the seas so calm that we were able to cruise a hundred miles north by sunrise. During breakfast we enjoyed a view of the Sierra de la Giganta Mountains rising out of the Sea of Cortez, bathed in morning light and glowing with a palette of rich, earthy colors. Afterwards, bottlenose dolphins foraging for their own breakfast surrounded the Sea Bird as we cruised the waters just east of Isla Carmen. These delightful cetaceans are our regular companions in these waters, often bow riding the pressure wave in front of the ship even though on their own they can swim twice as fast as our little vessel. This morning guests leaned over the bow to watch their sleek, gray forms moving like quicksilver below.
Then blows of much larger cetaceans caught our attention and we soon found ourselves in the company of two baleen whales, a cow and her calf, but which species were they? The sun shone through the clouds, sparkling on the waters and inspiring their exhalations with a mystical quality. The pair seemed content to maintain their schedule of five to eight minute dives and five to six breaths at the surface for the better part of an hour as we hovered nearby. Sometimes the calf came up sooner or took more breaths but often the two were in perfect synchrony. The size and shape of the fairly large, falcate dorsal fin helped in our final identification but it was the glimpse of distinct ridges along the margins of the adult’s rostrum (the area in front of the blowhole) that clinched it: we were enjoying unusually excellent looks at a mother and calf Bryde’s whale. This species is notorious for being erratic and difficult to watch but, as Captain Graves observed, rain in Baja is also unusual... so, what else is new? Bryde’s whales are also known as the Tropical whale as well as Balaenoptera edeni. They grow to between forty and fifty feet in length and are found around the world, roughly between latitudes 35 degrees north and south.
Later in the afternoon we made like marine mammals ourselves and donned wet suits, fins and mask and snorkel to see what lay beneath the surface. Erika Iyengar, our Undersea Specialist, went one step further with SCUBA gear and filmed much of the marine life we encountered. These bright orange-yellow cup corals live on the sides and undersides of rocks and resemble sea anemones with their long feeding tentacles. Although related to the anemone the cup coral’s soft tissues grow from a hard, cup-like corallite, which protects the polyp and also helps to move food towards it. Equally colorful fish of all shapes and sizes buzzed about the rocks, defending territories and casting wary glances at the strange forms floating above them.
We finished the daylight hours with an option to hike up a beautiful arroyo carved deeply into incandescent red rocks by many, many days of “unusual Baja weather” over eons of time. So, what’s new with you?
Unusual weather greeted us in La Paz yesterday: rain! Today, the first full day of our trip, skies remained overcast but temperatures warm and dry and, most blessed of all, the seas so calm that we were able to cruise a hundred miles north by sunrise. During breakfast we enjoyed a view of the Sierra de la Giganta Mountains rising out of the Sea of Cortez, bathed in morning light and glowing with a palette of rich, earthy colors. Afterwards, bottlenose dolphins foraging for their own breakfast surrounded the Sea Bird as we cruised the waters just east of Isla Carmen. These delightful cetaceans are our regular companions in these waters, often bow riding the pressure wave in front of the ship even though on their own they can swim twice as fast as our little vessel. This morning guests leaned over the bow to watch their sleek, gray forms moving like quicksilver below.
Then blows of much larger cetaceans caught our attention and we soon found ourselves in the company of two baleen whales, a cow and her calf, but which species were they? The sun shone through the clouds, sparkling on the waters and inspiring their exhalations with a mystical quality. The pair seemed content to maintain their schedule of five to eight minute dives and five to six breaths at the surface for the better part of an hour as we hovered nearby. Sometimes the calf came up sooner or took more breaths but often the two were in perfect synchrony. The size and shape of the fairly large, falcate dorsal fin helped in our final identification but it was the glimpse of distinct ridges along the margins of the adult’s rostrum (the area in front of the blowhole) that clinched it: we were enjoying unusually excellent looks at a mother and calf Bryde’s whale. This species is notorious for being erratic and difficult to watch but, as Captain Graves observed, rain in Baja is also unusual... so, what else is new? Bryde’s whales are also known as the Tropical whale as well as Balaenoptera edeni. They grow to between forty and fifty feet in length and are found around the world, roughly between latitudes 35 degrees north and south.
Later in the afternoon we made like marine mammals ourselves and donned wet suits, fins and mask and snorkel to see what lay beneath the surface. Erika Iyengar, our Undersea Specialist, went one step further with SCUBA gear and filmed much of the marine life we encountered. These bright orange-yellow cup corals live on the sides and undersides of rocks and resemble sea anemones with their long feeding tentacles. Although related to the anemone the cup coral’s soft tissues grow from a hard, cup-like corallite, which protects the polyp and also helps to move food towards it. Equally colorful fish of all shapes and sizes buzzed about the rocks, defending territories and casting wary glances at the strange forms floating above them.
We finished the daylight hours with an option to hike up a beautiful arroyo carved deeply into incandescent red rocks by many, many days of “unusual Baja weather” over eons of time. So, what’s new with you?
