A Whale of a New Millennium

While the world waited for the Y2K event, some in fear of social and technological meltdown, or others, who turned out to be correct, just for a good party, we at Custodio experienced a millennial event of our own. We were left breathless and heartstruck in meeting a creature from millenniums past on our doorstep, looking into its eyes and sensing its power and fragility.

It was the workers on Peter’s roof who called down for us to look at the whale. Nothing unusual for us at this time of year, except that it was floundering in shallow waters next to the turtle camp, waves washing over its body, as it lay helpless in the sand, moving closer to shore with every breaker. There was a crowd of onlookers, Mexicans on holiday, standing on the beach, some with their cameras, but no one daring to get into the water to help.

Mona quickly called Jackie and Ulrich, Tom and Laurie and their kids, and they walked across the estuary channel. Pepe and I had a meeting with the Ejido, but as soon as they came we asked them to wait, and quickly followed. Jackie was the first to approach the whale, some 20 ft long, still alive and breathing, but obviously exhausted from its efforts in trying to get off the sand bar. Jackie says she thought she could just push the whale out to sea, and was not afraid to touch it, but soon the futility of trying to move anything this large became evident.

By the time Pepe and I arrived, everyone was standing around the whale, as though trying to console it in its predicament, but unclear as to what could be done. The whale was clearly not a humpback, which winters in these waters, but of completely different shape and configuration. Its eyes were clear, it never panicked at the approach of all these people, but its efforts were getting weaker, and the sea was moving it closer to disaster. Totally out of the water a whale can actually break its own bones from the sheer weight of a body suited only for the sea.

Pushing from either end was futile, as the only time the whale would become buoyant was in a wave that pushed against us. In addition there are very few parts on a whale that can be used as handholds. The tail was good, but much too flexible, and the flippers would only allow one or two persons a good purchase. For an hour we barely kept our place, winning a little ground on small waves, then getting smashed back by the bigger ones. There was also the fear of having the creature roll on someone and pin them underwater. The body was covered with barnacles and sea lice, the first of which cut, and the latter, which stung when transferred from whale to human.

Finally the idea of rolling the whale came from an unidentified source, and we found that by all getting underneath one side, and using flipper and tail for leverage, we could actually get it to roll on a small swell. We are not sure how the whale felt about going upside down once in a while with its blowhole into the sand, but we all had the feeling that it sensed that we were not there to do harm, and it let us move its body parts around without a single incident of thrashing. So roll we did, once, twice, again and again, each time getting a little deeper until the whale was floating half the time.

We next pointed it out to sea and began pushing through each swell, gaining ground at last, until we hit another sandbar. By this time we were all dog tired, and the surf was getting bigger, and we were in danger of losing all that we had gained. The red sun was sinking into the fog on the horizon, and we were also running out of daylight. Then from around Punta El Custodio we saw a fishing boat approaching, and recognized Gabino, whom Pepe and I had left up above. They maneuvered the fishing panga around until they were just beyond the breakers, and we could see that they had some ropes. Ulrich, who swims like a fish, went after the rope, while we pondered how to best tow a whale, finally deciding that there was no way we were going to get the rope around the creature’s belly, so we pushed and pulled, finally pointing its tail to the sea. Tying a slip knot around the tail, the boat put tension on the line, and with all of us pushing on the whale’s head, it finally moved through the breakers and out into the calmer, deeper waters.

We returned to the villas exhausted, but elated to have had the experience of a lifetime just a few hours from the turn of the millennium. We looked up the whale in our guidebook, and found it had been a gray whale, at least 300 miles south of its normal range.

Looking into the eyes this creature, which evolved on land and entered the oceans millions of years ago, cast a humbling perspective on all the hoopla over a timespan of a mere two thousand years.

Min, Mona, and the Custodio Millennium Gang