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Whale season in full swing in Baja California Sur
BY ELINO VILLANUEVA AND ARTURO SORIANO/EL UNIVERSAL
El Universal
January 30, 2006
PUERTO ADOLFO LÓPEZ MATEOS, Baja California Sur - By the time December rolls around along the coast of Baja California Sur, things have settled into a pretty regular routine. The fishermen go out, they come back in; the tide goes out, the tide comes back in. Nothing changes much, really, except for the increasingly cool winter temperatures.
But then comes the New Year, and that´s when the action starts. Fishermen temporarily set aside their hunt for fish and crustaceans to use their boats to ferry tourists around the peninsular waters. Larger tour boats spring into action as well, and restaurants, hotels, artisans and souvenir vendors get themselves into gear for the arriving crowds.
That´s because the period between January and March is when gray whales make their annual return to lagoon sanctuaries in Baja California to mate and breed, bringing with them flocks of admiring tourists.
By the end of this season, some 20,000 whales will have come to the warm Sea of Cortés coastal waters, where approximately 350 baby whales - weighing as much as one ton upon birth - will have been born. Another 40,000 humans will have come along to enjoy the spectacle.
The gray whales follow one of the world´s most impressive migration patterns. Each year, they travel approximately 12,000 kilometers from the frigid polar waters of the north down the western coasts of Canada and the United States to the Baja California peninsula. Swimming in familiar groups of 15 to 20, they average a speed of 18 kilometers per hour.
And while they were close to extinction during parts of the 20th Century, experts say that they have stabilized their numbers enough now that extinction is no longer a major concern. At one point, hunting had reduced the whale´s numbers to an estimated 250 worldwide. But by the 1967-68 migration season, the figure had rebounded to 12,000, and in 1997-98, the population had risen to 26,000.
This rehabilitation was especially critical given that the animal is one of the oldest species of mammals, having been on Earth for about 30 million years.
According to Dr. Luis Fleischer, who has spent the past 16 years with the International Whale Commission in Mexico, the gray whale is a Mexican citizen and not merely a seasonal visitor.
"It is often thought that the whales are ´loaned´ (to Mexico), but that is not the case," explained Fleischer, author of the book The Gray Whale, Mexican By Birth. "They are Mexican because they were born here."
The gray whale will only reproduce in Baja California because the coastal lagoons here provide the ideal conditions for the activity. The waters are calm and not too deep - no more than 50 meters maximum - and there are no sharks to bother them. And perhaps most importantly, the prevailing currents here create a warm body of water that has an ideal temperature for breeding.
The gestation period for gray whales is about one year, and females have calves every other year.
Because of its fondness for mating and living in coastal waters, gray whales have learned, to some degree, to get along with humans. In fact, they are commonly known to approach the tourist boats that travel into their breeding grounds.
But their closeness to humans and human civilization can also create problems for the animals, said whale researcher, Carlos Villavicencio Garayzar. As they swim along the coasts, he explained, they are confronted with contaminated waters spilling out from cities or industrial areas. Furthermore, gray whales can get trapped in the nets of fishing boats and can die if unable to get free.
WHALE DIVERSITY
Gray whales are not the only members of the species to journey south to Mexico in the winter, and Baja California Sur is not the only state to enjoy annual visits from the mammals. Nayarit state also hosts a winter colony of humpback whales, and this season, the Environmental Secretariat (Semarnat) is undertaking an effort to count the number of creatures migrating to Mexican waters.
Carlos Villar Rodríguez, head of the Department of Natural Resources for Semarnat´s Nayarit office, explained that the procedure will employ still and video cameras to count humpback whale tails, and thus extrapolate a population figure.
"The tails of the humpback are like fingerprints of humans," he explained. "No two are the same."
It is estimated that these whales undertake an approximately 10,000-kilometer journey each year from Alaska to Nayarit, where they mate and breed.
They arrive slightly earlier than the gray whales - usually in early December - and they stay a little longer as well, until sometime in April.
they wanted to touch a whale. Although the whales came close, none came close enough to pet.
Behind schedule again, we returned to Route 1 and started south, in the dark, for San Ignacio, where we had reservations at La Pinta Hotel. By now, we had become accustomed to driving in the dark, and we tried not to think about flash floods, errant burros or cars without lights.
San Ignacio was a beautiful change from the towns we´d seen earlier - a lush desert oasis with date palms, a lovely central square and 277-year-old Mission San Ignacio. It was the first town that felt like Old Mexico.
But when we checked into whale-watching, we learned it wouldn´t be easy. Laguna San Ignacio, we were told, was at the end of a 40-mile dirt road, made nearly impassable now by mud. People said they thought we could make it in our four-wheel drive, but it would be slow. With our time running out, we reluctantly decided to head north and take a second look at the whales in Ojo de Liebre.
Once again, we seemed to be a draw for babies and moms. A duo did a water ballet around and under our small boat. The baby emerged from the water near my hand and I reached out to touch it, but at the last minute pulled back, afraid I´d upset the skiff if I leaned over too far.
None of us touched a whale that day. But they touched us. And I can´t wait to go back to try again.