Grey Whale Watching

Pacific lagoons where grey whales give birth from December to March — among the best wildlife encounters in the world

From December through March, grey whales migrate from their feeding grounds in the Bering Sea to three lagoons on Baja's Pacific coast — Laguna Ojo de Liebre (Scammon's Lagoon) near Guerrero Negro, Laguna San Ignacio, and Bahía Magdalena further south. These sheltered waters serve as calving and mating grounds for the entire eastern North Pacific grey whale population.

The encounters are extraordinary: the whales — adults up to 15 metres long — will approach small pangas (open fishing boats) of their own accord, surfacing alongside and sometimes allowing people to touch their barnacled heads. This is not staged or encouraged; the whales initiate the contact. The lagoons are reached by driving the Transpeninsular Highway south from Ensenada; most visitors camp or stay in basic guesthouses in Guerrero Negro or at the lagoon camps. Tours run by local operators in pangas are the standard approach. The Laguna San Ignacio site is the most remote and least commercial; Laguna Ojo de Liebre is the easiest to reach.

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A story
In the 1850s, the grey whale population was hunted nearly to extinction in these same lagoons. The whales were so reliably present in the shallow calving waters that whalers called them "devil fish" for their habit of attacking the boats that came to kill them. By the 1930s there were perhaps a few hundred left. Under full protection since 1947, they have recovered to around 25,000 — and since the 1970s have shown a baffling willingness to approach human boats and allow themselves to be petted.