The tail of a deep-diving Humpback Whale, Megaptera novaeangliae, off the coast of Baja California, Mexico.
On my trip to Baja California on the Searcher, I was lucky enough to see five species of whale (some saw a sixth, which I missed), and four species of dolphin, as well as several other mammal species, well over a hundred bird species and a handful of reptiles, not to mention a great and interesting variety of fish while snorkelling.
We saw a particularly good number of Humpback Whales in the Sea of Cortez, aka Gulf of California, aka Mar de Cortés – 35 in one day alone.
The Humpbacks which are found in the Sea of Cortez are part of the North Pacific breeding group. This group summers off the coast of Alaska, then splits, with some migrating to the Hawaiian islands to calve and mate, and the remainder wintering off the east coast of Baja California. The journey from Alaska to Baja takes about forty days. The females have their calves (one every 2-3 years) in the warm (sub-) tropical waters, after an eleven month pregnancy. The highly demonstrative male Humpbacks make the same two migrations, in search of mates.
Humpback Whales are baleen whales which feed on plankton, mainly Krill, and small fish.
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