Whale Watching

Nick petting baby whale.jpeg

There is no sight more majestic than seeing a 60,000-pound humpback whale leap clear of the water.

When Betty and I had guests at our Puerto Vallarta home, one of our favorite winter activities was to take them out on Banderas Bay to observe the humpback whales. The best time to hit the water was right after dawn, fortunately, that's about 7:30 a.m. These huge beasts make one of the longest mammal migrations in the world, 6,000 miles. And they are mammals—they breathe, produce live infants that they nurse and are, in every way, gigantic mammals.

The humpbacks that come to our bay have migrated from Alaska to find calm, warm waters to breed and bear their young. We occasionally saw whales sounding from our balcony and nothing was more exciting than to see the spectacle of a huge humpback leaping clear of the water before returning with a gigantic splash. Sometimes the same whale jumped over and over again. No one is sure why the whales put on this performance. Some speculate that it is the males showing off to impress a female, but others claim that they are doing this to rid their body of barnacles. In any case it is one spectacular sight!

We left the marina right at dawn and we almost always encountered a huge pod of dolphins on our way out to the whale grounds. The dolphins always put on a show, surfing right in front and beside our bow—close enough that you could almost reach out and touch them. The dolphin show was enough for a great day in itself! But we had come to see whales and there was no telling where they might turn up.

Because whales are mammals they must surface occasionally to breathe, so we looked for the spout of water from their blowhole. A special thrill was seeing a mother with a newborn calf at her side. Mothers with calves seldom left the water like the huge males. The secret was to be close enough for a great view but not too close to disturb the whales. For some reason they liked to perform in the early part of the morning and by 10 a.m. the show would be almost over.

Interestingly, the scientists tell us that the humpbacks in the bay do not eat while they are there. Humpbacks have no teeth but take in their food of plankton and small fish by filtering tons of water through their baleen, a kind of filter in their mouth. They are not aggressive and there are ​rare reports of them defending a swimmer from a shark attack using their huge flippers as weapons.

We frequently saw huge manta rays lying on the surface. We could approach fairly close before they would dive and occasionally, we saw one leap clear of the water. Were they doing this for the same reason as the whales? On rare occasions we ran across a pod of eight or 10 spectacularly beautiful killer whales. Killer whales are not whales at all but are a type of dolphin that kill their prey by ramming into it.

One summer when I chartered a cabin cruiser to explore Alaskan waters with my grandchildren, we came across a group of about 20 humpbacks, each the size of a school bus, working together for a meal. They were on the surface in a circle thrashing and blowing air from their blowholes. They continually made the circle smaller and smaller as they concentrated the krill until they finally broke into a concerted mass to feed. It was a singular demonstration of animal cooperation.

A completely different whale experience was the two times we took my Pilatus airplane to the coast of Baja California where the gray whales come to the lagoons to breed and have their young. The Pilatus with its unusually low landing speed is the perfect plane to land at the small dirt strips close to the lagoons. We would land and hire a Pongo, (small outboard motorboat) and go out on the lagoon to get very up close and personal with the gray whales. They had no fear of the boats, probably because the boats were of no danger to them. Sometimes a young whale would come right up to the boat and let us pat him while his mother watched from 20 to 30 yards away like a mother would watch her child at a playground. Someone took a picture of me rubbing the tongue of a baby whale. Just ask, I will show you. I still carry that picture in my wallet. ​

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Art Weidman