Whale Trip Three – Baja Gray whale trip with Orca Network. Girls trip me and Nikki.

Orca Network is a nonprofit for whales, and whose big mission is to return Lolita, the orca back to her home waters, thus reuniting her with her family (Lpod). The Orca Network also organizes a trip to Baja every year to see the Gray whales. It is a fundraising mission where you get to see whales and also have an opportunity to interact with whale experts. As far as I am concerned, it doesn’t get better than that.

This trip encompasses two boat trips a day out into a lagoon to experience what the locals call “friendlies”. Friendlies are gray whales that decide to interact with humans on boats. Most friendlies are mother grays with their babies. The real crazy part of this adventure is gray whales were almost hunted to extinction in this same lagoon. Hunters knew the mother gray whales would come in to the calm lagoon to birth their babies and nurse them to a healthy weight before making the dangerous migration north. They were nicknamed devil fish because they could get really really mean protecting their babies, but then again what mother wouldn’t. Try taking my daughter from me or harm her and see what happens. It would not be pretty. After that story was shared with me, I was more in awe with what I witnessed in this lagoon. The gray whales would literally visit the boats with humans on them and want to be touched and show us their babies. How could these whales trust us with their calves when just as little as 50 years ago we hunted them? I witnessed mother whales picking their babies up with their rostrums to move them closer to the human hands. I witnessed babies who wanted no part of it, but the mother would insist. She would cut the baby off from his attempted escape and lift him up towards the humans again. The scared baby would do everything to slide off its mother’s nose to get away. I felt sorry for the baby but knew that the mama whale knew better than me what she was doing. Other baby grays loved the attention and wanted to interact with the humans. Sometimes longer than mama wanted. And sometimes mama wanted in on the action as well. You never knew what you were going to experience but it was always magical.

I had read that whales can recognize themselves in mirrors. I didn’t have a mirror but unscrewed one from the wall in the cabin we slept in and took it on our boat trip. A mom and baby visited our boat. I was in a good position to lower the mirror down to see what kind of response if any I would get from the whale. I saw her look, but what she did next literally knocked me off my feet. When whales exhale under the water it creates a pressure that bubbles at the surface. That pressure is powerful because it hit the mirror and cracked it and sent me flying backwards and right off my seat. Everyone scattered to help me up and I couldn’t breathe. I had so much salt water down my nostrils and throat I coughed and blew sea water out of my nose the rest of the night. I don’t know if she was trying to communicate with me or what, but she made an impression on me. Not sure she liked the mirror or hated it, but I definitely got a reaction. That same trip even after the mirror was removed from the water. We had another mother and baby come over to our boat. So now we have two moms and two babies interacting with us. I am so over the moon happy I can’t stand it. Then we see a third mom and baby coming in. The boat captain asked everyone to sit down because he was going to have to move the boat and leave the whales. I was not happy, but later learned it was too dangerous for us to stay with that many whales. The babies or worse yet the mothers could get into tiffs with one another and that may not be good for us. It would be a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We could all be easily hurt. But I must tell you I was never scared. Being surrounded by all those beautiful whales was a dream come true. I never felt fear only complete awe.

The last boat trip out, of this vacation, was the one that I cannot speak of this day without extreme emotion overcoming my body and my eyes welling up with tears. I remember thinking on all the previous trips out that I was always more interested in the mothers than the babies. I remember thinking that seemed strange because like most others I thought I would gravitate towards the babies. I found myself wanting to spend time and watch the mother grays. I was at the back of the boat and everyone was on my left side looking over the boat playing with a baby. It felt like the boat was going to flip over, so I moved, along with two guides to the opposite side to balance the boat. I was looking down towards the back of the boat by the motor and a mother gray spy hopped right next to me, made eye contact, and with that eye contact knocked the wind out of me and made my entire body weak. I took a seat or maybe the seat caught my fall, I don’t know. I had to sit and from there I just started sobbing. I turned my back to the group because I didn’t want anyone to see me crying. I was crying so hard I could barely keep quiet or catch my breath. The person in front of me which happened to be the founder and organizer for Orca Network asked me if I was ok. I nodded and couldn’t speak. She held my hand for a second and I felt she understood. After we talked later, she did understand. It had happened to her on a previous trip. I had several encounters by this time with the grays. All extraordinary, but this one takes the cake and I still don’t understand what happened. But when I think about it my stomach and heart fill up with emotion like nothing I have ever felt before. It is intense but without a message. Just a feeling. So confusing.

I thought I had been changed by whales previously but now I was shaken to the core. Something happened that science couldn’t explain. Heck, I can’t explain it. I just felt it and it was real, but the fact I was supposed to learn or do something with this experience haunts me today. I search for the message in the encounter but can’t seem to find one. Feeling frustrated as I know my whale encounters have purpose in them. I struggle to find that purpose, maybe the vision is clear, I am just too afraid to follow it. I hope I find the answers soon or overcome the fear soon. The worst thing that could happen is the whales give up on me and that is my biggest fear.