Camacho, who used to rap on the side of the family fishing boat to shoo away the whales, said local guides now do the opposite, silently gliding in close to them. Some tourists have been known to tip $100 if they get close enough to pet or kiss a whale as though it were a puppy.
On a recent day in this quiet lagoon community, where there are no telephones and people communicate by radio, eight small boats were filled with American, European and Mexican visitors who had arrived by private jet or driven across the rough desert to get a glimpse of the whales.
The gray whale was hunted nearly to extinction in the early 20th century and put on the endangered species list in 1970. It was taken off in 1994.
(Andrea Bruce Woodall -- The Washington Post)
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"Come on! Come on! Come a little closer!" coaxed Eddie Mendia, a San Diego ship maintenance worker, who came hoping he might get close enough to touch one of these giants of the sea. As a mother and her newborn whale leapt in tandem a few feet from Mendia, he marveled at the stamina that would soon carry the pair back 5,000 miles north to the Bering Sea.
"It's fantastic," he said, snapping photos of a dozen whales jumping around him. "Did you see his eye? Did you see that spyhop?" "Spyhopping," in whale-watcher lingo, is when a whale raises its head above the water for a look around.
Jean Paul Leigh-Smith Leitch, a restaurant manager from Spain, watched intently as the blubbery, barnacled back of one whale after another rose above the waterline, appearing like small gray submarines. "They are all over the place. It's beautiful," he said.
The comeback of gray whales in these waters is all the more spectacular because it has not happened elsewhere, said Monica DeAngelis, a marine biologist with the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service in California. She said that there are only about 100 left in the Western Pacific, feeding around Sakhalin island in the Sea of Okhotsk, off the Siberian coast of Russia, and that the population that existed in the North Atlantic is now extinct.
Homero Aridijis, a Mexican poet and environmentalist who helped lead the successful campaign against a proposed Mitsubishi salt factory at the edge of this lagoon several years ago, said the abundance of whales brings a "sense of satisfaction" to conservationists who championed the cause, including several Hollywood stars.
Still, Carole Carlson, a marine biologist visiting Mexico this past week with the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said that although "there are much stronger numbers, we are not out of the woods yet." Speaking by phone from Mexico City, she said "save the whales" campaigns had raised the visibility of the constantly traveling mammals, which were normally out of the public eye.
During the months when the San Ignacio lagoon turns into a whale nursery, Zaragoza, the whale census chief, arrives here once a week. He drives his government pickup over salt flats and desert roads and pulls into the inlet's sandy shores, dotted with cabins and tents for whale watchers and small homes for fishermen.
On a recent day, the first person to flag down Zaragoza was Pachico Mayoral, a 64-year-old fisherman turned whale tour guide, who excitedly said there were more whales this season than he could ever remember.
Not that counting whales is easy. Zaragoza said he strives for an accurate count by cruising at six miles an hour, just ahead of whale speed, to avoid counting the same cetacean twice. His partner, Martin Garcia Aguilar, keeps watch on the opposite side of their skiff. He said years of experience, a sharp eye and a set of binoculars also help.
The two spend hours traveling up and down the usually calm waters, counting adults and babies, noting their dives, breaches and spuming blowholes. The whales get so close that the men are sure they recognize some -- by the marks and spots on their heads and tails -- from previous years.
"Some of them look you right in the eye," Zaragoza said. "They may be big, but they are gentle."
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