whale talker

Two young ladies came out from San Jose del Cabo to join me on a search for Humpbacks yesterday. Christine, who I have known for a few years now, and her friend (and my new friend) Linee from Vancouver, BC. We had planned to go out that afternoon but the wind came up and it was cold so we decided to conserve our energy for today. Problem was this morning that it was both cold and raining (but no wind)…not search weather!
Nevertheless I talked to Vicente and we agreed to wait until 11:00 am to see if the weather would clear, the ladies had to return to SJD in the afternoon. At around 10:00 I went up on the bodega roof (rain had stopped) and took a look around to see if there were any HBs in the area. Within 5 minutes I see one about a mile out going north. I went into town, found Vicente, told him we had a whale and he agreed to meet us at the boat launch in 15 min.
Christine and Linee were delighted and within a half hour we were near Boca del Alamo hoping to spot the whale….and we did. Linee had never been near a HB before and was really excited. We got an ID and then immediately saw a group of blows about 2 miles further out. We found three HBs there and I got two more IDs (one HB would just not fluke up). We saw 3-4 more HBs in combat another 2 miles out but it was beginning to rain and by then we had been out for 3 hours and the cold was getting to us (the day had remained drizzly and dark) so we came in. We were all totally satisfied with the day and it proved yet again the Buddhist adage, “perseverance furthers”.

This is a shot of the three. I was hoping they would all fluke up at the same time so we would have a great record of a temporary “unit” but it was not to be.

This is HB# 20 10 and the best ID shot of the day.