Don Pachico Mayoral and Los Ballenas Amistosos

This week’s “Ocean Person” is Don Pachico Mayoral, nicknamed the “Whale Whisperer” because of his historic “first encounter of a whale kind” on Baja’s San Ignacio Lagoon.

For 40 years Don Pachico Mayoral, a Mexican Baja fisherman, was worried every time he set sail in his small boat on San Ignacio Lagoon, especially in the winter.  That’s when the 40-ton creatures they nicknamed "devil fish" were in the lagoon, sometimes pursuing and overturning other boats on the lagoon.  He and his fellow fisherman would take along big piece of wood to bang on the side of the boat to scare the devil fish away.

Then on a January day in 1972, one of those massive monsters acted completely different. She didn’t smash his boat with her massive flukes nor crush it with her jaw.  Rather she quietly surfaced near his boat, along with her new baby (a mere ton) and gently rubbed against the vessel's side.  Don Pachico cautiously put his hand in the water, and she rubbed against his hand, lingering for some time.

That day the phenomenon known as "los ballenas amistosos," the friendly whales, began, and continues to the present.  Of the thousands of whales in the lagoon every winter, 10% regularly approach boats with their young and initiate contact with humans, rubbing, hovering, allowing touch, playfully nudging the boat, when one flick of the whale’s tail could sink the much smaller vessel. 

Gradually a tourist industry grew, but Don Pachico and the others insisted it stay small and locally controlled.  Under strict conservation rules a limited number of small boats take tourists out and wait for the whales, moms and calves, to approach them.  

Don Pachico kept fishing the rest of the year, but he and now his son are revered whale guides in the winter.  I met the Mayorals when I petted and even kissed the whales on my trip to San Ignacio Lagoon in 2003.  As ocean scientist Dr. Silvia Earle says, “Whale watching takes on a whole new meaning when the whales are watching you.”

Check out this video of the friendly whales and interview with Pachico by National Geographic. In the film Pachico describes the encounter:

“My partner and I were so afraid, our legs were shaking. I touched the whale very gently and the whale remained calm. Minutes passed, and I kept petting her, until my fear went away.” Asked how it made him feel, he said, “It was sublime for me because when I saw the size of the whale and I was so small by comparison, I gave thanks to God. Whales were heavily hunted by humans, yet they are very friendly towards us, and they forgive all the damage we did. That’s why I have a lot of love and respect for them.”

Grey whales migrate yearly between Alaska where they feed all summer, and Baja, where they give birth and mate, 6000 miles each way.  19^th century whalers preferred hunting grey whales to the open ocean sperm or humpbacks, because they swim predictably near shore, north and south. Later the hunters located the hidden Baja lagoon entrances and waited each winter for the easy kills, turning the lagoons red with blood.  The harpooned whales earned their “devil-fish” name by fighting back aggressively, but in vain.  From 40,000 whales the population dropped to less that 5000, before whaling was outlawed in 1948.  The population very slowly rebounded mid century, but the whales were understandably wary and continued their aggression towards humans.  Until 1972.    

Why the change in behavior that year?  Marine biologists posit various theories; the whales finally felt safe, they have parasites they like having scratched, the moms are bored waiting for their calves to be big and strong enough to make the northward trip to Alaska (only a third of the calves make it, with hungry orcas and abandoned fishing nets ready to trap them.)

But I am taken with the speculation by some folks that the whales, considered intelligent, able to communicate by song with each other, in some way knew things on dry land were changing, people, attitudes, laws. In the very year right before they first approached Don Pachico, in 1971, the US passed both the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act (these were both Nixon Administration laws!), and the International Whaling Commission tightened its ban on whaling.  Might the whales be reaching out unilaterally in thanks?  Don Pachico was not a whaler, he was fishing for scallops, but maybe these wise moms were using positive reinforcement; See, you do better when you act nicely?

Or were they laying the ground, establishing good relations, in case there were future threats?  As indeed there were.  In the 80’s Mitsubishi wanted to build a huge salt plant on San Ignacio Lagoon, lucrative salt minerals needed for computers and other tech.  They offered Mexico billions for the land and water.  The environmental movement in the US and Mexico rallied against it for years, seemingly in vain.  One strategy they used was to bring decision makers, like the president of Mexico, to San Ignacio, and have Don Pachico take him out on the water, to have the friendly whales come over with their babies. By then the ballenos and Don Pachico were good friends.  Without that already established relationship Mitsubishi probably would have won, but Mexico bravely and boldly turned them down.  And made the Lagoon an international heritage site. 

Thanks to the whale moms and calves.  And to Don Pachico.  Gracias.

Copyright © 2107 Deborah Streeter