First whale we've seen this year.Los Barriles.

[Edited on 12-19-2011 by BigOly]

Finback.

This thread triggered an old memory of a wonderful encounter I had in 1982 with a fin whale at Punta San Francisquito. It was actually published in a book on dolphin and whale encounters:

Ken, how have you managed to keep your girlish figure?

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Originally posted by Dave Ken, how have you managed to keep your girlish figure?

Quote:

Originally posted by Dave Quote: Originally posted by Ken Bondy This thread triggered an old memory of a wonderful encounter I had in 1982 with a fin whale at Punta San Francisquito. Ken, how have you managed to keep your girlish figure?

Yeah...Ken. Jeeezo, you're a real babe.

Too late

Hey Ken...that whale must have known you were a photographer and a nice guy...he was posing for you ....guess you didnt have your camera eh?

Once, the head honcho of Baja Life, Eric Cutter, looked me up cause he wanted a cover shot of a spyhopping whale for his March issue. It was very early in the season and most whales had newborns with them and so there was virtually no spy hopping going on in the lagoon at that time and I told him so...but he insisted he had faith in me and he would get the shot he needed....sheesh...so he was a pretty nice guy and so out we went and the lanchero and I were talking about how no way was he gonna get a spy hop shot for his magazine...when lo and behold an enormous whale spy hops directly in front of us about 100 yards away...the lanchero and I look at each other and laugh....bloody typical!

We laugh because whales LOVE to prove us wrong and make us look silly in front of clients...just after we say something, they love to make monkeys out of us and have a grand sense of humour!

So this particular whale, not only spy hopped, but continued to do so all around our panga for about an hour which is simply unheard of...not natural and just plain silly. She was very photogenic and made sure to have the sun on her just right and held her poses long enough to be photographed a kazillion times. She must have liked Eric to give him what he wanted....and of course we have never ever seen anything like it since that day.

Whales often seem to know what we want/need and go out of their way to provide it and make us happy....or on the contrary if some passenger is nasty, they go out of their way to splash you, spout all over your camera, slap the boat and generally scare the crap out of you.

Can you believe it Sis? Me without a camera and that happens. 30 years gone by and it still hurts

So true shari, I'm usually welded to a camera, the one time I didn't have one a fin whale tries to climb into my inflatable

First whale I've seen this year

spotted this one @ Walmart Ensenada yesterday:

That's some serious "back cleavage"......