Whale Watching In Baja California, Mexico. Experience Grey Whales Off Baja.
Every winter, more than 20,000 California grey whales (Eschrichtius robustus) migrate 6,000 miles from their summer feeding grounds in the cold waters of the Bering and Chukchi Seas to the warm waters in the lagoons off Baja California's central Pacific coast. From December through March, three lagoons provide the California Grey Whale with protected waters for breeding and calving.
Grey whales have gathered in Baja for centuries where they winter, procreate and give birth to their young before heading north to their Arctic feeding grounds. Although some Greys go all the way south to Magdalena Bay, most stop halfway down the Baja Peninsula, in or near the Guerrero Negro, Ojo de Liebre and San Ignacio lagoons within the Vizcaino reserve.
Whale
watching in Baja has become a major part of the Mexican tourist industry. Fortunately,
female Greys mate one year and give birth the next, assuring that
the lagoons are filled each winter with calves and with males breaching
in courtship displays. It is also common to encounter friendly whales
that approach close to the tour boats.
Historically,
these lagoons have not always provided a safe environment for the
adult whales to engage in courtship and breeding as hunters decimated
the population a century ago. The Pacific Grey Whale was by then
an endangered species. Mexico was one of the first nations to call
for the protection of whales in the 1930s, and created the world's
first whale sanctuary at San Ignacio Lagoon in 1954. The scope of
protection for the whales and the size of the protected area expanded
over the years, culminating in the creation of the biosphere reserve
called "El Vizcaino". Whale watching activity within this
area is now carefully regulated, yet still offers tourists some
of the world's best opportunities and the closest encounters with
these magnificent creatures.
