Some days are simply special and today was just that; we encountered a large group of long-beaked common dolphins while cruising over glassy waters at sunrise. Many blue-footed and brown boobies followed the dolphins as they chased the schools of baitfish around. The whole scene couldn’t have been more magical, the archetypal Sea of Cortez at its best! Sometimes the dolphins accelerated in dramatic bursts that made our captain speed the National Geographic Sea Bird up in order to catch up with them, while those birds floating in the water hurried to take off and continue their pursuit of breakfast. Whenever the dolphins–and perhaps large predatory fish like yellowtails—managed to push the baitfish against the only barrier in their pelagic world, the surface, both species of boobies plunged into the water, throwing their wings back at the last moment and transforming into real arrows that penetrated a couple of dozen feet deep. What an exuberance of life!
After having our fill of the feeding frenzy we arrived to San Ildefonso Island and explored it by expedition landing craft; we admired the big magnificent frigatebird and brown pelican nesting colonies there and even had the chance to follow a couple of blue whales that kept circling the same area very close to the island’s northern end. The same area where Mike Greenfelder and I went diving; in fact, a blue whale’s blow and back were the first things I saw when my head came out of the water at the end of the dive! We brought back underwater video of the marine creatures including stone scorpionfish, redhead goby, browncheek blenny, purple sea star and many more species. But the stars of our dive were a couple of species of nudibranchs that were extremely abundant in some areas, sometimes numbering up to 30 individuals in a square meter!
After leaving San Ildefonso we sailed north looking for marine mammals and boy, we found them. We watched several more blue whales including one individual that came to us and surfaced just a few feet from our ship. The largest animal that has ever lived on planet earth paid us a visit and we couldn’t be luckier. As I said, some days are simply magical!
