The broad back of a gray whale breaks the surface just 15 feet off the starboard side of our panga. Our small boat is piloted by Pachico Mayoral, the fisherman who was first to make friendly, hands-on contact with gray whales, in 1972 in Laguna San Ignacio, Mexico. 
She exhales with a loud whoosh. The mist of her exhaled breath rises in a heart-shaped puff from her dual blowholes, then dissolves into droplets that spray our faces in the boat. All seven passengers, including me, laugh with delight to have whale breath on our faces.
Her newborn calf surfaces right next to the mother gray whale. It’s about 15 feet long, compared to its mother’s 45 feet, and its back is a fresh, smooth, dark gray, without the barnacles and scars that roughen its mother’s back. The calf’s whoosh is a perfect, miniature replication of its mother’s exhalation. I have just a couple of seconds to see the perfectly formed baby whale -- the line of dorsal knuckles along its lower spine, the wide tail flukes -- before it re-enters the water, and I am thrilled with its beauty.
This mother gray whale has chosen to swim alongside us and let her calf be near the boat. On our port side, a pair of adult gray whales swim alongside our boat. They swim within a foot of each other, a sign of courtship that will probably lead to mating. Perhaps the four whales are attracted to the music that a teenaged girl on our boat is playing on her chanter, a recorder-size melody pipe that she removed from her full-sized bagpipe. All we know is that the four whales accompany our boat for twenty minutes or more, a magical time of gray whale whooshings and chanter music, as Pachico lets our boat drift slowly.
Gray whales migrate to San Ignacio and two other saltwater lagoons on Mexico’s Baja Peninsula each winter for two purposes: calving or mating. Gray whales not interested in these purposes also migrate south from the Bering Sea and North Pacific for the winter, but they stay outside the lagoons, feeding offshore along the Baja peninsula. Inside the lagoons, the gray whales have important reproductive business, but in recent decades they have added another activity: contact with humans.
The friendliness of gray whales toward humans is a new behavior that emerged in the 1970s. International whalers had hunted the grays in these lagoons, and not surprisingly the gray whales used to attack any boats, even the small pangas of the Mexican fishermen, even though they never had hunted the whales. So Pachico was afraid when a gray whale first approached his boat in the lagoon in 1972, and he tried to avoid it. But the whale kept coming back to his boat, apparently seeking contact with the two fishermen in the boat. Pachico finally overcame his fear and reached out to the gray whale.
That first breakthrough led slowly to more friendly contacts between people and gray whales. Eventually the friendly gray whales came to the attention of whale biologists and then ecotourists. The friendly behaviors -- now mother gray whales often push their calves toward the whalewatching boats, and people pet the baby whales’ heads, with the calves responding like friendly puppies -- take place only in Baja’s three saltwater lagoons, San Ignacio, Guerrero Negro to the north, and Magdalena to the south. Once outside the lagoons, gray whales still avoid boats, staying at a distance.
This trip is my third visit in five years to Pachico’s whalewatching camp, now managed by his son Jesus and his wife Sabrina. The camp, one of several along San Ignacio, has cabins, campsites for campers like my husband and I, and a solar-powered main building called the earthship, with adobe plaster over a structure built from old tires, cans, and bottles.
The lagoon is part of El Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve, and whalewatching is strictly regulated. It is allowed only in one zone, leaving the gray whales undisturbed in most of the lagoon. Only a few boats are allowed in the whalewatching zone at one time, for a limit of ninety minutes per boat. Guides cannot approach whales closely; they must idle their engines and allow the whales to choose if they will swim up to the boats. Only local residents get to be licensed guides, after passing required training.
On previous visits, my husband Gene and I have both had chances to pet friendly gray whales. It doesn’t happen today, but we are still well-rewarded with the whales near our boat and sightings of whales spyhopping, courting, and breaching all around us.
We’re also rewarded with the people we meet at the camp. Getting to Pachico’s requires traveling on your own in Baja, finding and navigating the road that was a four-wheel-drive only road just five years ago (now it’s paved halfway). The challenge of getting here and the camp’s off-the-grid character act as a selective filter. Only the more adventurous and, I think, most interesting travelers get here. This year, we meet a German couple, an American family headed south to volunteer at a Baja school, and a German woman who is helping the Tarahumara Indians, the legendary distance runners, start a modest ecotourism venture in Copper Canyon.
With these folks and the Mayorals, we are apt to discuss at dinner the challenge of how local people in the world’s most beautiful, biodiverse places can make a decent living while both protecting and sharing the natural beauty where they live. The camp fosters an international mix of ideas about how to tackle environmental problems, and ways to help people improve their lives without losing control of their destinies.
Jesus and Sabrina have dreams for their camp: solar and wind power, films in their earthship building, birding tours of the lagoon outside whale season, and lots more. The spirited graphics on the cabins were painted by a volunteer who was a graphic designer, Sabrina points out, and she adds that they are always looking for volunteers, especially people with special talents to offer. People intrepid enough to consider going to San Ignacio can find more information at Pachico EcoTours about how they can help.
Editor's note: Check out NRDC's Save Biogems campaign for more info about Laguna San Ignacio and how to help.
Photos: Top: NRDC Save Biogems. Middle and Bottom: Val Rapp
