Whale Sharkin' : Off Shore

Light streamed down, across the water in a line aimed directly at us, an orange light from a huge, full moon. The glassy surface of the bay tipped and tilted gently, flashing the beam into pieces from an impressionist painting. Except for the line, the water looked completely dark. The sky, glowing in the orange radiance, silhouetted a ring of black islands all along the horizon. Though they're 13 miles offshore, it seems in this peaceful night on this calm water, that we could paddle our little four man paddleboat all the way over with no effort at all. But we knew our keg, secured in the center of the tiny water craft, would not last, and being offshore on such a lovely night required beer.

Bahia de los Angeles is a small dusty town of 600 people that sits on the Sea of Cortez about halfway down the Baja California peninsula. Electricity poles are being strung so that someday soon the town will change, but tonight there's not a light anywhere. There's no electricity, just generators, and past ten o'clock, there's rarely a wink of light to be seen. And who needs it out here under a full moon? Offshore in our paddleboat: there's no lights and no noise except the soft slapping of waves against our hull. The land around us is so black it's like a void, while the water twinkles with the line of beaming moon. It's perfectly peaceful.

Then there's a noise, the sucking in of air, a deep breath, a smacking of water. It comes and goes with regularity, circling us. "it's smelling us," I say. We all sit with our knees bunched up in the little seats of the paddleboat, we're trying to be quiet, but we're excited, we're making guesses about our sea creature friend, and we're drinking homemade beer from a keg strapped to the center of the boat. We're the happiest bunch of morons on the planet right now and it's nearly impossible to be quiet about it.

We spot it; it's a sea lion, his head bobbing out of the water just five meters away. He's sniffing and gurgling in the water, rolling over playfully and snorting at us. He seems just about as happy as we are, enjoying the beautiful light from the full moon, the smell of a beer and sea, the gentle lap of the water.

After a time the sea lion seeks out other entertainment and we decide to paddle out a little further. Terry and Matt are at the peddles and when they get us going, we find we're going in circles. Michael and I, sitting in the back, now man the rudder and steer us out, towards the islands.

It was Terry who made us see the light, it was he who decided that a midnight full-moon boat party was called for, and it was he who inspected the haphazardly strewn boats tied to the beach palapa in front of our hotel. There was the Blue Frog who was deemed sand clogged and unfit for water travel, and there was a sun baked green one without working peddles, and then there was the White Dwarf: a four seater with a questionable rudder. We opted for the White Dwarf and after securing the keg, we piled in and splashed off.

We're finally quiet, we've refilled our beers from the keg and it's magical out on the water. Terry says that if a dolphin jumps in the moonlight beam, he'll cry. Matt replies that he wants to see Terry cry. In fact, he says, he'd cry if Terry cries. Mike pledges that if Terry cries and then Matt cries, he too will do his part and cry. A bird lands on the water, right in the orange beam of light.

"Nope," Terry says, "I won't cry for that."

"Nope," Matt says, "You can't cry for a bird. We're waiting for sea life, damnit, we need splashes and mammals, right?"

"Damn straight."

No dolphin hears Terry's plea, so there's no danger of a pitiful boat full of crying men being rocked overboard. But there's plenty of life out there. The Sea of Cortez is the most habited body of water on the planet. It's here where all sorts of whales come to breed and birth, dolphins congregate in thousands, whale sharks socialize and unending schools of fish swarm.

~

When legendary fisherman Zane Grey came here in the early 1900's, he recorded astounding numbers and sizes of fish. Jacques Cousteau proclaimed the area "the world's aquarium". But in the last few decades populations have been decreasing rapidly due to over-fishing while the larger marine life, who depend on the deep bays, are threatened by human development.

In the last ten years a battle has been waged - on one side the government wants to develop Baja's Sea of Cortez coast with marinas, high rise hotels and nightlife to encourage tourism. The government believes that droves of Mexican mainlanders and Americans will ply the waters in yachts; fishing, enjoying the pleasant weather and warm waters, the abundant wildlife viewing and the classy, new marina facilities. On the other side is locals who fear the destruction such large projects may have on the wildlife and the untouched landscape.

In June 2007 this area of the Sea of Cortez was deemed a biosphere reserve by Mexican president Felipe Calderón, ending the decade long battle of the Nautical Ladder. But locals here don't see any change. The Nautical Ladder marina project is going ahead on private land north of the little town and fishermen still use huge nets to scoop up entire schools of fish like tuna. It's a delicate balance, though and no one has an answer. The reserve makes it hard for locals to make a living as it's a fishing town. The Nautical Ladder may upset the migratory patterns of creatures such as the whale sharks, but the tourists will bring much needed jobs and cash.

Joel Prieto, our whale shark guide, is a soft spoken man with salt and pepper hair and moustache. His missing middle bottom tooth gives him a cute, Madonna-like gap and his light lisp is endearing. He obviously loves this place. He's part of the turtle restoration project, he's a responsible wildlife boat driver, and he's an outspoken town member trying to create regulations regarding marine wildlife and how humans should interact with them.

Joel is obviously distraught while he talks about it. He is torn, but he continues to set an example of using tourists to make money while respecting the limitations of the wildlife. He and a town council have set a code of conduct limiting the number of swimmers to four that can be around a whale shark at one time, the number of boats on the bay and general rules about how people should interact with the sharks. Definitely don't touch them. Don't drive your boat too closely to them.

We're been searching all morning surprisingly close to the coastline with no luck. We're alone on the bay, surrounded by a beautiful desert landscape, dramatic mountains and perfectly glassy water. We chase dolphin and schools of fish smacking the surface. Joel drives his panga up to La Mona Beach - Monkey Beach - and beaches it. Here, it's perfectly quiet, a faint call of happy sea gulls, the gentle lap of the sea. There's a heavy heat, the sun weighing on our shoulders; the smell of salt and fish - a briny, thick scent - is ever present, and it's cooking on the hot white sand of the beach.

In the evening Matt mans the grill as I chop the veggies, Terry's making margaritas and Michael's cleaning a few fish. Our hotel is a haphazard affair on the beach. Piles of discarded appliances, tools, boats, cars and building materials crowd the dusty property. A few casitas ring a main house. Several palapas and bars with stools dot the beach area. There's dogs running around; everything is quaintly tinged with age. We're at the bar with a big propane grill making fish tacos. We were disappointed that in two days we still had not found a single whale shark. We worried that the objective of our trip would elude us. It's our main topic of conversation.

Whale Sharks can grow to 18 meters long and weigh 4 tons. They feed on plankton which generally blooms near the surface, causing the sharks to skim the surface with their huge mouths open filtering sea water as they cruise in slow circles. They are generally alone, but come to the bay during the late summer to feed and socialize. A whale shark doesn't reach sexual maturity until it's about 25-30 years old or about 8-9 meters long. Not too much is known about their life away from specific bays where they congregate, but it is thought that they can live 100 years.

A guy named Tom showed up at our little bar. He had flown himself in to Bahia earlier that day in a single engine Cessna. He insisted that he could find us a whale shark, he insisted that it was a snap.

"You see," he says, "You just go to the one spot, just after Mona Beach, and at 9:30am, right on schedule they're there." He held his hands in front of him at waist height as if he was palming a basketball. "Right then, Poof" he raised his hands slowly, depicting the holy 9:30am action of the whale shark. "And then," he went on, "At 11:30 on the mark. Whoosh. Just like that." He lowered his hands back to waist level. "That's all there is to it."

We sipped our margaritas, "That's it?" asked Terry, "Just 'poof' and 'whoosh' huh?" Terry mimicked the hand gestures.

"You've got it," Tom said and repeated the gestures.

"Hmm," Matt mused, "So at 'poof'" he raised his hands, "we need to be on the water at 9am to make sure we see it. What if we got there at, say, 8am?"

"Well, obviously, you'd have to wait and hour and a half for them to, you know, poof." He raised his hands.

"Well, we're going on the water at eight. If you want, you can come with us, just be outside at 8." In the morning, though, Tom is nowhere to be seen.

~

It's 10:30am and we're having a celebratory beer after swimming with our first whale shark. GPS location: n.28* 54.345/ w. 113* 28.694/

We took our little boat, the Wild Weasel, out on the bay and headed to the south end, where we'd been told that the Whale Sharks like to congregate. Michael drove the boat while the rest of us scanned the calm waters with binoculars, debating what a whale shark fin will look like and which coastal nooks would most likely harbor the giants. Finally we see another boat with people hurriedly putting on dive gear. They've spotted something.

The water is so murky; we couldn't see the whole shark at once. It was about 20 feet long and swimming so slowly along that it takes almost no effort to keep up with it. We swam respectful circles around it, under it. We inspected it's low slung eyes, shark-like. It's white underbelly. It's beautiful, glowing white markings on its grey-blue back. It's huge tail pumps slowly back and forth and I struggled to maintain my distance as it seemed to turn, curiously, towards me.

Back in the boat we hoot and holler, clinking our beer cans together, high on the thrill of swimming with the giant fish for nearly an hour. Our resident Whale Shark expert was right, the shark was right on time, we cheers to Tom.

"Hey," Terry says, "That shark, he went 'poof', right, and came up, and now, he's gone 'whoosh'." Terry made the gestures.

"Well," Matt said and he popped his finger on his lip, his indication that he had suddenly morphed into his newest character - Tiberon Ballena - with his Tiberon Ballena finger moustache, "Friends, I told you that you could hop on my back, but it's eleven and I have to go now, whoosh" And Matt took off his finger moustache and pushed his palms down. He laughed, popping on the moustache here and there and doubling over at his own little joke.

"Okay," Michael says, "I'm done with this whale sharkin', have you guys had enough? Let's go fishing. In fact, let's have a grand slam day. We've been whale sharking, now lets go fishing, let's go diving and let's go clamming! Then we'll take out the White Dwarf!"

"Grand Slam!" shouted Terry. And then he said, softly, "I love being offshore." He couldn't have put it more eloquently for any of us.