Magdalena Bay & Hull Canal
It’s not bad to wake up to rolling seas, dramatic skies casting shadows against the relief of craggy hills, black-vented shearwaters, and a gorgeous sunrise. Not bad at all.
We saw the scattered blows of gray whales outside of La Entrada, and once we entered the calm waters of Magdalena Bay, more showed themselves. Equally exciting, off the port bow a glow in the water was spotted: thousands of pelagic red crabs massed into a smear of vermillion just under the surface. These small, open-water crustaceans are splendidly bright and a delicacy to the birds and sea turtles of the area. They seemed almost too intensely red to be believed.
We had time to dust our feet in the fine sand of Isla Magdalena before lunch. Wandering over wind-shaped dunes, we marveled at the plants that could make a living in such a desolate place and reveled in the wild breakers crashing on the shore of Sand Dollar Beach. Sand dollars indeed! The high tide line was strewn with the white discs of hand-sized creatures. At the water’s edge, other shells rested, surrounded by the trails of polychaete worms, which could be seen wriggling their green-ribboned bodies in the shallows.
The afternoon was spent working our way north through the narrow mangrove channel of Hull Canal during an extreme low tide, which meant mud flats galore. Taking advantage of the sandy feasts were herons, egrets, sandpipers, ibis—even coyotes got in on the game, trotting along the exposed mangrove roots and wading into the water’s edge.
Many times over the course of the afternoon, we were accompanied by bottlenose dolphins. Sometimes they’d pass us by, sometimes they’d duck under our bow and surf before us, and sometimes they played in the waves we kicked up astern. Once we passed Colina Coyote, we started scanning in earnest for gray whales and were rewarded by the sight of a mother and calf rolling together alongside the National Geographic Sea Bird. It was the perfect introduction to Larry Hobbs’s talk on the life history of gray whales, which we enjoyed once we set anchor just south of Boca de Soledad.
Tomorrow, we venture forth again. Our eyes are tuned. Our ears are sharp. We’re ready for what this productive area will offer in the coming days.
