Around 6:30am an announcent comes over the speaker announcing sperm whales off the bow! Flying to get my gear I whip out of bed and head for the deck (over slept.) There were sperm whales just everywhere. These whales are toothed whales unlike the previous whales in my posts (minus the false killer whales.) They have the largest brains in the world and the deepest divers. Their diet consists of squid so in order to get their meals they must travel far below the suface. They have a single blow hole like all toothed whales, but their spout is actually at a 45 degree angle. Unfortunatey what you see at the surface is just a small portion of the story. My friend Carlos Navarro actually is the only human being to ever record and witness them feeding from their mouths not via their blowhole.
This next portion of the day ran me 24gb of shooting space! San Pedro Martir is the most remote island in the Gulf of California and is is a fantastic one at that. It is approximately 33 square kilometers in area and is just covered in guano. And by covered I mean that in all possible senses. There are thousands of blue footed and brown footed boobies inhabiting the area breeding. We see everything from tropic birds, yellow footed gulls, harimans gulls, eared grebes and pelicans ‘painting’ the entire landscape. Thankfully protected from guano harvesters. This nitrogen rich substance (aka bird poop) is the perfect nutrient to spawn the growth of all sorts of flora (plant life.)
The one truly awesome and most fun thing for me is photographing california sea lions. They are the only ones that bark I am told and with the caves and groves in the cliff side their calls orchestrate and reverberate for thousands of feet. Truly phnominal. Plus they look like puppies which can’t hurt the level of the enjoyment. The rest of the day will be spent heading toward Santa Rosalia across the penninsula for our adventure in San Ignacio Lagoon. We will be spending 90min with the grey whales on pongas (small boats.) Unfortunately it is a 45min ride on a good road and 1.5hr on a bad road to get there. This is the consequence of the grey whales migrating in mass so soon and never seen in almost three decades! …and yes I changed tenses in this article. Waiting for night to start working on images is killer to your sleeping habits. Finally found an hour to breathe..I mean work.
The early morning sun was the perfect compliment to these bow riding bottlenose dolphins.
Backlighting doesn’t always have to be a boon to your photography. It’s perfect for lighting the blows of this sperm whale.
Blue footed boobies line the top of San Perdro Martir and brown footed boobies line the walls. The guano is high in nitrogen so as long as they aren’t super saturated in the stuff it is a huge nutrient for plant growth.
Sleepy sea lion. Aww.
No official ID was made, but this was a baleen whale that had washed up onto the island. From the color you could tell it has been there for a little bit already in the sun. This is a stitched panorama shot from a zodiac. Using vertical exposures to avoid excessive cropping.
Eared grebes were everywhere. They have a beautiful orange eye, but are very cautious of any approach.
