San Pedro Mártir Island
The most isolated island in the Sea of Cortez glowed white with the first sun rays of the day as the Sea Voyager approached San Pedro Mártir. The guano-covered volcanic island is an epicenter of life in the midriff island’s region, as it is located equidistantly from the three most important up-welling areas of the gulf. The number of flying birds around the land greeted us as we dropped the anchor, suggesting the huge amount of life around the island. Soon after breakfast we explored San Pedro’s shores from either kayaks or Zodiacs, or both. Numerous young California sea lions named themselves ambassadors and created a playful reception committee that followed us throughout most of the island. Red-billed tropicbirds, brown pelicans and magnificent frigate birds joined the myriad brown and blue-footed boobies that peppered the cliffs and flew through the skies.
Shortly after lunch we raised the anchor and headed offshore looking for other, bigger kinds of life. The deep waters around the island are very productive and it was not long before the first blows were spotted in the distance: sperm whales! Many individuals of the largest of all toothed whales could be seen over a wide area showing a number of different behaviors, including lob-tailing, spy-hoping and even breaching. Three younger sperm whales even seemed engaged in some kind of competition, as they breached repeatedly not far from us. Bottlenosed dolphins joined us and contributed their good share of acrobatics, bow-riding and jumping high just off our marveled eyes. As the afternoon advanced, the whales seemed to slow down a bit and spend more time socializing close to the surface. A very young baby sperm whale, possibly just a couple of days old or less, with part of his umbilical cord still attached to his belly, swam close to his mother and gave us hope for the future. After spending several years with the family group, he will eventually move into the cold waters off the Aleutians and Kamchatka where he will feast and grow into gigantic proportions. And if he survives both natural predators and human nonsense, he might eventually come back into these very same waters as a mighty, scar-faced giant ready to reproduce and complete the cycle. Maybe some day. But today, as he swam past me and our eyes met, I wished him luck.
The most isolated island in the Sea of Cortez glowed white with the first sun rays of the day as the Sea Voyager approached San Pedro Mártir. The guano-covered volcanic island is an epicenter of life in the midriff island’s region, as it is located equidistantly from the three most important up-welling areas of the gulf. The number of flying birds around the land greeted us as we dropped the anchor, suggesting the huge amount of life around the island. Soon after breakfast we explored San Pedro’s shores from either kayaks or Zodiacs, or both. Numerous young California sea lions named themselves ambassadors and created a playful reception committee that followed us throughout most of the island. Red-billed tropicbirds, brown pelicans and magnificent frigate birds joined the myriad brown and blue-footed boobies that peppered the cliffs and flew through the skies.
Shortly after lunch we raised the anchor and headed offshore looking for other, bigger kinds of life. The deep waters around the island are very productive and it was not long before the first blows were spotted in the distance: sperm whales! Many individuals of the largest of all toothed whales could be seen over a wide area showing a number of different behaviors, including lob-tailing, spy-hoping and even breaching. Three younger sperm whales even seemed engaged in some kind of competition, as they breached repeatedly not far from us. Bottlenosed dolphins joined us and contributed their good share of acrobatics, bow-riding and jumping high just off our marveled eyes. As the afternoon advanced, the whales seemed to slow down a bit and spend more time socializing close to the surface. A very young baby sperm whale, possibly just a couple of days old or less, with part of his umbilical cord still attached to his belly, swam close to his mother and gave us hope for the future. After spending several years with the family group, he will eventually move into the cold waters off the Aleutians and Kamchatka where he will feast and grow into gigantic proportions. And if he survives both natural predators and human nonsense, he might eventually come back into these very same waters as a mighty, scar-faced giant ready to reproduce and complete the cycle. Maybe some day. But today, as he swam past me and our eyes met, I wished him luck.
