How is starting your trip out with a sighting of an 80ft+ sized blue whale sound? The day started with a green flash and at 6:34am sunrise was upon us. As we all sipped our coffee/cider/tea we scanned the horizon for the towering characteristic blows. Blues are known to venture into the Gulf of California quite often. Sightings have been high recently and our hopes were met. This is a first for us and boy was it an amazing experience (despite having a HD camcorder crap out on us for no apparent reason and a few shots missed because of it, but I digress.) The blue whales are the largest creatures to have ever roamed the earth. And they are still here! They feed one some of the smallest creatures known as phytoplankton. How much do they eat? Well depending on the species of krill they eat at least 30 million krill in a daily feeding. That is approximately four servings of 175 KFC box chicken meals(just passing on the statistic people, haha)! And how do they get to this size? When the calf is born is needs to gain weight fast. It does so by drinking the mother’s milk which contains 40% body fat. It gains 9lbs an hour and 200 lbs a day! Talk about being worried about stretch marks.
The majority of the evening was spent at Isla Danzante on a rocky shoreline. The trails on the way up were zigzagging up the landscape to make the climb easier. I however have not noticed these trails and decided to climb the rock face with camera and monopod in hand. The landscape was littered with brush and lizards buzzing by as they scurry away from us. The cardon cacti seem to reach out and touch the sky. The landscape only grew stronger as the sun began to set behind the mountains. With an hour or so to go before the last zodiac was headed back to the boat I decided to hike down a gorge and see what I could find. Besides the unfortunate soda bottles and rope (carried a bunch back) I found a yellow footed gull; quite cooperative actually. So much so he actually seemed to signal to me I was in a bad spot. See [in the image below] he looked up the towering mountainside and seconds later rocks came tumbling off the cliff. That or he was looking out after his own hide, but I like to think he was returning the favor.
Enormous fluke of a blue whale.
Common dolphins enjoying the pressure wave of the ship.
The main operation seen from above. From our ship the seabird to the zodiacs and the people ashore on the coastline.
Cardon cactus reaching for the sky.
Ever position yourself belly down on a bed of jagged lava rocks to get as many shots as you can of your subject. Here he is, worth all the effort.
See I don’t lie.
Butt shots are rude.
A view as the sun pierces the mountain tops painting the landscape below.
This is a photo taken by Dina B. of Finback whales. The second largest animal in the world. You’re looking at the mouth on its massive head up front and part of the back of another finback behind it. Keep in mind that the rear finback has his head submerged and you don’t even see his dorsal fin or anywhere near his fluke. Just to give you an idea of how massive these animals are.
A snorkeling photograph taken of a starfish by Dina B. herself using the Olympus 1030sw. Great little camera and an awesome photograph to boot. Both of these photographs by Dina make me proud seeing how she can put the Nikon D70 and 1030sw to work.
(Just so everybody knows we won’t be checking our e-mail during this week to conserve internet time. Please feel free to send any contact or questions and we will get back to you starting late Sunday. Take care everybody and thanks for reading.)
