Bahia Magdalena
Upon a millpond sea in a lazy fog, we embarked on another morning of Zodiac cruises in Magdalena Bay. How apropos to seek gray whales in a grayness; we could detect the whales more by sound of breath than by sight of breadth. Perspective of distance and size was confused in the monochrome world around us. The sun’s sphere appeared periodically, more like its apprentice moon full on a clouded night than like patron of day. Within this atmospheric abstraction, we soon found ourselves eye to eye with true voyagers and survivors of the seas, California gray whales.
Emerging out of the placid gray dream of early morning, mother and calf grays lazily melded with the surface. And incredibly, a few whales approached our Zodiacs for intimate engagements. Calves born here in these protected inland waters are rapidly gaining pounds, musculature, experience, and confidence, and are being introduced to humans for the first time, before embarking on monumental voyages to points far north.
As mammalian brethren, we reach out to understand these oceanic beings that lead such a far-ranging and different existence from ours. It is a privilege to be able to ponder the curiosity and apparent wisdom in the eye of a young whale that must quickly learn of the world before soon being dispatched by its mother.
Slaughtered to believed-extinction here in these protected lagoons, it is remarkable that gray whales will now encourage encounters here with boatloads of humans. Whalewatchers today offer reparation in adoration. Like the whales that approach us, we are ambassadors of our kind, forming an experiential bond to help understand the place we hold on our planet.
A fogbow formed over the Sea Lion as the sky began to resolve and the world opened before us to the wind-sculpted dunes, mangrove tangles and waterways of Magdalena Bay. We coursed through the whale nursery lagoon complex to the gentle swells of the Pacific, leaving behind a point of extraordinary contact.
Upon a millpond sea in a lazy fog, we embarked on another morning of Zodiac cruises in Magdalena Bay. How apropos to seek gray whales in a grayness; we could detect the whales more by sound of breath than by sight of breadth. Perspective of distance and size was confused in the monochrome world around us. The sun’s sphere appeared periodically, more like its apprentice moon full on a clouded night than like patron of day. Within this atmospheric abstraction, we soon found ourselves eye to eye with true voyagers and survivors of the seas, California gray whales.
Emerging out of the placid gray dream of early morning, mother and calf grays lazily melded with the surface. And incredibly, a few whales approached our Zodiacs for intimate engagements. Calves born here in these protected inland waters are rapidly gaining pounds, musculature, experience, and confidence, and are being introduced to humans for the first time, before embarking on monumental voyages to points far north.
As mammalian brethren, we reach out to understand these oceanic beings that lead such a far-ranging and different existence from ours. It is a privilege to be able to ponder the curiosity and apparent wisdom in the eye of a young whale that must quickly learn of the world before soon being dispatched by its mother.
Slaughtered to believed-extinction here in these protected lagoons, it is remarkable that gray whales will now encourage encounters here with boatloads of humans. Whalewatchers today offer reparation in adoration. Like the whales that approach us, we are ambassadors of our kind, forming an experiential bond to help understand the place we hold on our planet.
A fogbow formed over the Sea Lion as the sky began to resolve and the world opened before us to the wind-sculpted dunes, mangrove tangles and waterways of Magdalena Bay. We coursed through the whale nursery lagoon complex to the gentle swells of the Pacific, leaving behind a point of extraordinary contact.
