Whale watching

During the months of January through March whales migrate from the US northwest down around the tip of the Baja and up into the Sea of Cortez to winter and to give birth so they pass right by Cabo San Lucas. It is always exciting and entertaining to try to spot any signs of the passing whales. Even from our lounges at the resort we can see signs of whales by their spouts of water or the glimpse of their tails as they shoot out of the water and dive back in.

This year we decided to go out on a whale watching excursion. There are several different kinds of excursions to choose from: a catamaran, a dinner/sunset/whale watching crusie or a zodiac boat. We choose the zodiac. It is small and FAST and seats about 15 passengers. As you can see the day was perfect for a sea adventure.

January is early in the migration season so we hoped we'd be lucky and be able to find a few big guys. Not to worry... we were out for 2 hours and saw lots and lots of whales and dolphins! The dolphins love the turbulance of the wake of the boats so they are drawn to the zodiacs to play in the surf. We were entertained by their antics of surfing the waves to leaping out of the water and one was even doing flips! It is frustrating trying to catch photos of them because by the time you spot them up out of the water they have disappeared back down and you've missed the shot!

We did have a very unique experiece though ... we came across this whale that was totally wrapped up in a fishing net. The whale was huge. You can see that it was bigger than that white zodiac boat. We had a marine biologist onboard our boat and she was very concerned when she saw this situation. She was happy to see that the whale was still spouting water because that meant it was still breathing but it was definately in a life-threatening situation. There were about 4 zodiac boats (ours included) that came upon it and one of the other boats sped back to the marina to pick up some scuba divers. When they returned 2 divers dove in and were going to try to cut the net off. We had a really seasick woman on our boat so we weren't able to stay to see if the divers were successful so we just have to hope that all went well and the whale was saved.

I'm sure that from now on a whale watchng excusion will always be part of our itinerary when we go to Cabo!