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WhaleWatcherNotes
(c)1998 June Woodward
Devilfish or Devilwhalers In Baja?
They called them "devilfish". So ferocious and dangerous were these whales that they rammed and overturned the whaling boats which chased and harpooned them and their new calves. Those mighty whales threw men into the churning sea and slapped and splintered the wooden boats with their enormous, powerful flukes. There is even one report of a whale attempting to remove her calf from a harpoon with her own mouth!
The California gray whales fought a pitiful, dismal, losing battle with whaling ships in the calving and nursery lagoons of Baja Mexico. It lasted there from the 1840s for roughly 30 years. The grays were easy pray, because they were in the Baja California winter calving grounds. They refused to abandon their new calves and flee, and in just those few years the gray whale population was reduced to near extinction. Before turning elsewhere, the whalers made a huge fortunes selling the whalebone and other products extracted from gray whales.
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In the spirit of justice delayed, I'd like to propose a new term here - "devilwhalers"! The whales' very future, the next generation of calves, was destroyed year after year, along with their mothers, clouding the prospect for the survival of that species. Finally their stocks were so depleted that the whalers moved on to other more profitable pursuits.
It is our great good fortune that despite the relentless slaughter, the gray whales did survive and have even recovered to what we suppose was their previous population level. That level is believed to be somewhere around 20,000 to 24,000 animals. Still, let me be more specific here. The Pacific gray whales survived as a species, but not one of the Atlantic grays remains alive today. That thought surely puts a damper on the joy we can feel about the gray whales' recovery.
Magnificent Descendent of the "Devilfish"
- Photo: by P. Ampfer |
Now consider that those whales - the so-called "devilfish" - were the same stock as today's "friendlies" described in a previous column! They are the gray whales seen and enjoyed by boatloads of whale watchers every winter and spring in the very same Baja lagoons. You know, the playful, touching, gentle, people seekers described in thousands of first hand accounts from visitors.
What happened? We don't know exactly what happened, or how. We can only note that it took almost one hundred years. One rather sensible guess speculates that the grays were probably curious and unafraid of people throughout most of their natural history. Most likely, they turned dangerous only after being relentlessly hunted and massacred.
However, we do have a record of the first gray whale and human interactions that were officially documented. It's a great story published in the National Geographic in June of 1987. That story begins in 1977 and introduces Amazing Grace, a playful, inquisitive female gray whale calf. Two researchers, Steven Swartz and Mary Lou Jones, gave her that name because, "her friendly behavior at the time was somewhat amazing and her movements underwater, like those of all her species, were graceful beyond description." The article describes their interactions with her and then other grays over a period of six years in the nursery lagoon, Saint Ignacio, in Baja Mexico.
Those good times started when Grace approached their small inflatable boat and played with it, bumping, pushing and lifting the craft for her amusement. At first the researchers were frightened, but as time went on Grace became less rambunctious and began to make very close approaches and stops so that she could be touched and scratched. Despite their astonishment, the people delighted in joining those interactions. Other calves and grown whales gradually joined the fun.
Those same researchers returned to Baja the next year uncertain and anxious to see if the whales would repeat the friendly behaviors. To their great pleasure, the same playful interactions emerged that next year. Those whales had just completed their annual 10,000 mile migration to and from summer feeding grounds in the Bering and arctic seas, but still they sought out petting!
That became the ritual that lasted throughout the six year study, and continues today with an wide array of whale watchers every year.
But, there is a dark cloud hovering over this story. The Japanese industrial giant, Mitsubishi, wants to build a huge salt extraction plant in Laguna San Ignacio. They have offered to share profits with the government of Mexico, and the power of that offer is enormous. There is furious debate in Mexico and around the world as to the impact such a facility would have on the whales.
We know this much -- San Ignacio is the last undisturbed breeding lagoon for these grays. The idea that adding ocean going shipping and building a mile-long loading pier across the mouth of the upper lagoon would not disrupt the animals' behavior is ludicrous. Then too, this will be an evaporation facility, not a manufacturing plant, so jobs will be limited, but ships, trucks, heavy equipment and pollution will not.
I strongly suggest that we vote with our feet and plan trips to the lagoon now. Economic returns from tourism are among the most powerful arguments to keep San Ignacio safe for the grays.
Email: Woodward@avana.net
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