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A mother gray whale lifted up her calf, seemingly to help it get a
better view of the excited onlookers. Turn down sound, if sensitive, humans make noise, the whales here do not.
The
gray whales in San Ignacio Lagoon frequently approach small tourist
boats, seeking the human interaction. While they could easily avoid the
people, whose small boats are not allowed to closely approach whales,
they actually seem to enjoy making contact.
Laguna San Ignacio is
on the Pacific coast of Mexico's Baja peninsula and is the destination
for hundreds of gray whales, who migrate annually to the region from
their feeding grounds in the Arctic. Here, where the water is shallow
and warm, they give birth to their young. It lies within El Vizcaino
Biosphere Reserve and is the gray whale's last undisturbed nursing and
breeding ground, largely thanks to an environmental victory in 2000 that
stopped the development of an industrial salt plant.
Whale
watching here is highly regulated, with limits on how many boats can be
on the water, how long they can stay, and how close they can get; rather
than closely approaching the whales, they must idle their engine and
wait for the whales to approach the vessel, which is a common
occurrence. Visit: oneworldoneocean.org
