Exploring a world without fences…
one story at a time.
We just posted a new trip report for our first trip of the 2022 wildlife travel season. Mako and blue sharks off Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Well I should stop calling it a mako trip, since the makos did not show up this year. We did have some solid blue shark action which was really great. Anyway, here is the link to the trip report, hope you enjoy.
The Dude! Jacobo of Cabo Shark Dive.
Day One of my Baja trip - We went out this morning to look for smooth hammerheads. I joined a morning trip organized by my buddy Jacobo, owner of Cabo Shark Dives. The morning was beautiful, the sun was out, with no wind, and the ocean was deceivingly calm. Of course, the boat is moored in the bay of Cabo San Lucas, and the waters here are always nice and calm.
As soon as we left the bay's protection, the swells in the Pacific started building, and the winds picked up. It was going to be a rough day out at sea.
We motored out about 7 miles, and the chumming began. Not even 10 minutes into chumming, a silky shark showed up and took a bite out of our hang bait. Sadly the excitement was short-lived because the silky did not stay very long.
We continued chumming; everyone's hopes were high.
Two hours later, we had another visitor to our chum box. This time it was a smooth hammerhead, but sadly, like the silky, the hammer did not stick around long enough for us to get in the water. It left just as fast as it arrived. The chumming continued for another hour, and we had two silky sharks show up, but again, they did not stay.
Watching water… chumming and waiting for sharks to show up.
It is so difficult to figure out why some sharks stay and others leave. Sharks all have their own personalities - Some are bold, some are curious, and like the four sharks that visited us today, some are shy.
Sadly we had to leave early as Jacobo had a group he was taking out in the afternoon. The wind and the swells kept building, and the ride home was a bit of an ass-kicking, so I opted to stay in instead of going out with him for the second session.
Although we did not get skunked, we did not have the morning we all hoped to have. But that is nature and the ocean, and you never know what you are going to get. That is why I always plan our pelagic shark trips with more than one day because these sharks are so difficult to find sometimes. You need more than one day for a shot at seeing them. But despite the lack of shark encounters and no cool pics to share, I had a lot of fun hanging out on the ocean with the Cabo Shark crew and my buddy Al who out there with us.
Plus any day you get to spend out in nature is ALWAYS a great day.
So the plan now is to pack up my gear, grab some dinner and get ready to meet the group joining us for the orca trip tomorrow morning.
Thank you for reading and I hope to see you out in the world… somewhere… anywhere!
February 21, 2021 (2:49 PM Sunday) - Travel day, flying home to Texas. I have been gone for two weeks for this trip. Lots of eating out, sharing time with guests, and I did stay pretty busy with wildlife on this trip. However, I did not film as much as I should have, nor did I write as much as I needed to - so behind on all of it, sorry guys. I am not making good on my word. I frustrate myself because I failed to keep proper records of this adventure. I have had this discussion so many times with myself. Talking about it and doing it are two very different things. Sometimes you come back from spending all day on the water and the last thing you want to do is write or record yourself, but I will get better at it. Ok, enough with what is going on in my head, on to the blog…
On our first day out, we ran into this baby humpback whale breaching over and over. It was such a happy baby, enjoying being alive.
Our mako trip went so well; I am very proud of it. We encountered makos every day we were out on the ocean. On day one, the mako only stayed for around 20 minutes, not a lengthy encounter, but enough for everyone to see it and get excited about seeing more makos. It was a small shark, about 3 feet long, super cute. On our second day, we had a mako show up about 20 minutes into chumming, a record for me. This shark stayed with us for about 45 minutes before it left. I think it was intimidated, because it was really tiny.
After that, we had two blue sharks show up about 3 hours later. Now that is a typical wait for oceanic sharks. We swam with them for about an hour, but finally had to call it a day. Conditions started getting worse, so we were forced to leave. Blue sharks are amazing sharks, they are very bold and will come in and stay for extended periods of time. It is a species shark divers dream of encountering. Very photogenic and not shy at all.
On our final day, we began chumming, and about ten minutes into the chum, we noticed a small brown-looking animal swimming towards us. We thought it was a sea lion at first, but it was blowing water out of a spout, so we thought it was a pilot whale. But it was brown; pilot whales are black. Then Fer had a moment when she realized it was a baby sperm whale. We automatically pulled up the chum and went after the whales, hoping for a shot at seeing them underwater.
I managed to snap one image that I am happy with. The rest are terrible due to the bad vis. I still feel so lucky to have spent some time with them. It truly was a dream come true for me.
This was a huge pod of whales, at least 20-30 members strong. They were scattered all over the ocean, hunting, I believe? We were all on fire. For whale encounters, sperm whales are one of the most coveted whales to hopefully encounter.
Of course with that first jump, reality hit hard - the visibility was horrible. We found out that unless we were within 10 feet of the animal, we could not see it. So it made the encounters a bit more intense. Everyone was super gung ho about it and did not mind, but it was always a shock to see this massive animal just appear out the green soup. Sometimes it seemed like the sperm whales were shocked as well. On one encounter one of the whales took a crap and then dove straight down. Our group was left floating next to the muddy water, huge smile on our faces. The pod was mostly females, with a few babies. The babies would stay at the surface while the adults would drop down to the depths, my guess they were hunting. I do not think we encountered any bulls, but there could have possibly been juvenile males there.
The best encounter of the day was when our buddy Roberta swam towards a group of about three sperm whales. She could not see them until they were very close, and when she looked up they were right in front of her. One of the whales had its mouth open, not sure if it did that to show her it’s very lethal pair of teeth or if it already was swimming that way. She filmed the encounter and this big beautiful whale close up. I pulled a frame grab from the clip. Such an impressive predator.
Towards the end of the day while we were following the whales, we saw a mako swimming close to the surface. Officially making it three days in a row that we saw makos. This was such an amazing trip, filled with beautiful wildlife and surprises. It was everything you want from an open ocean adventure off the coast of Baja. Plenty of shark action and whale encounters as a bonus.
Baja always delivers.
A happy happy thank you to all our friends who joined us for this adventure. Big hug until the next one my friends!
