That Time I got Blasted in the Face with Whale Snot

Ewww! Whale’s breath is both funky and fresh

A 20-foot-long California gray whale drifts toward author Craig K. Collins’s panga in Ojo de Liebre Lagoon, Baja California Sur, Mexico. Collins spends a moment petting the whale’s rubbery, wet skin before receiving a point-blank blast from the whale’s blowhole. (Photos: Video frames by Sonya, used by permission.)

The great leviathan drifts just beneath the surface toward our panga, the small, motorized craft carrying a dozen humans out into Baja’s Ojo de Liebre Lagoon to commune with several of the thousand or so California gray whales here to mate, give birth, rest, frolic, and, in recent years, check out those odd primates — fellow mammals — bobbing on the surface in small, blue vessels.

The whale floats slowly toward me like some barnacle-encrusted log that had been felled from a colossal tree. I lean over the side of the panga, arm outstretched in a sign of interspecies friendship.

The whale, every bit as long as our 20-foot boat, drifts closer, now on its side, its eye a couple inches beneath the surface, its gaze now locked onto mine.

Visitors to the lagoons of Baja California are able to see eye-to-eye with great leviathans in what is one of the truly unique interspecies communal experiences on the planet. (Photo: ©Craig K. Collins)

I stretch farther over the side in anticipation, my hand nearly touching the water. The whale, now upright, meets the panga with a thump that sends a shudder through our boat.

I am staring directly at its blowhole, two large, closed slits behind the top of its head.