Grand Gathering of gray whales

Before I Was Even Married

Before Johnathan and I were married, I learned something about his mother: she loves animals, and she takes conservation seriously. Seriously enough that she sent the two of us to the Baja Peninsula, to San Ignacio Lagoon, to see the gray whales.

I did not know the whales needed saving. Boy, did I learn.

Photo by: @themalibuartist, watch video here.

The Trip Was Supposed to Be Courtney's

This trip started out as Courtney's. She had to cancel at the last minute, which, according to my original journal, was the same thing that had happened a couple of weeks before, when she double booked herself. This girl likes to travel.

Getting there was its own adventure. We barely made our connection in Dallas. I waved to get the pilot's attention and made a "please" sign with both hands, and they let us on. Boy, have those days changed.

And they had peanuts on the plane. Pretzel eaters, I say this with love: you are wrong.

So, About the Salt

Here is why we went. In the late 1990s, Mitsubishi, in a joint venture with the Mexican government, wanted to build a salt factory on Laguna San Ignacio. Not a little one. A $150 million plant, designed to be the largest salt facility in the world, on one of the last wild places where gray whale mothers come to give birth.

Gray whales swim a round trip of roughly 10,000 miles from the Bering Sea to get there, to have their calves in the warm water.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) took it on, alongside partners including the Natural Resources Defense Council and Mexican conservation groups. They filed legal complaints, called for a boycott of Mitsubishi products, and funded science to show what the noise, the shipping, and the construction would do to the lagoon.

On the trip, we were briefed on the issue and talked through our options. An older woman named Cynthia poked holes in one argument after another. She worried that big money would find a way around the rules and the plant would get built anyway. Hopefully she's wrong, I wrote in my journal. But she had a lot of valid points.

I loved hearing it that way. The people fighting for this lagoon were not naive.

And they won. In 2000, under serious public pressure, Mitsubishi and the Mexican government dropped the plan. The lagoon stayed what it was.

Glamping It Was Not

We flew in on a dirt airstrip and stayed in tiny plywood huts with palm leaf roofs. Outside lay these big bags of water, just sitting in the sun. I remember wondering what on earth they were for.

That was our shower. Sun-warmed water, in a bag. Go ahead and picture it.

As for the bathroom, I cannot tell you where we went. I can tell you it was not in our hut.

Photo from: https://www.kuyima.com/san-ignacio-lodging/

The Whale Made of Shells

There was also this wicked cool artist, and the thing I remember most is what the artist made: a huge whale built out of scallop shells. Thousands of them, all discarded after overfishing, laid out into a gray whale.

I still think about that piece. Someone looked at a mountain of leftovers from what we took out of the sea and turned it into a tribute to what we were trying to protect.

Norm and the Bush

The people are what make a trip like this special, and I will never forget a man named Norm Roberts. Norm wrote the Baja California Plant Field Guide, so yes, he literally wrote the book.

One day he ran straight up into a bush that looked SO thorny, and started flapping his arms up and down like a bird. In the bush. He was showing us it wasn't thorny at all. It just looked thorny, like camouflage.

What a hoot. After the trip, Norm sent us one of his books, and it is still on our bookshelf today.

Looking a Whale in the Eye

Then there were the whales. Our first whale watch lasted about three hours, on tiny boats, and we probably saw 50 to 70 whales. They came right up to us. Then came an hour with two of them. They squirted water out of their blowholes. We looked them in the eyes. We petted them. I even kissed them. Everyone ran from one side of the boat to the other, and I'm surprised we didn't flip. I jokingly asked Victor, our guide, if they were trained. Looking into the eye of a gray whale, there is no way to deny the existence of God. I can still feel my heart swell just thinking about it.

It was the most moving, spiritual experience with a wild animal that I can imagine, and it brought tears of joy to our eyes.

On our Greater Yellowstone trip last week, a fellow traveler named Jen told us she had made this same trip. She said the whales gravitate toward boats with children. How do they know? I guess they can see it in their eyes.

So, What Do Whales Have to Do With Anything?

I got to go on another life-changing, informative conservation trip last week, and it reminded me why I say yes to these. Trips like this grow our minds and our perspectives. Say yes to the trips.

And the people are what make them special.

Next chapter: who wants to hear about the Greater Yellowstone Coalition?

Learn more about San Ignacio Lagoon and gray whale conservation through ifaw and Kuyimá Ecoturismo.