A group of tourists an unforgettable experience when a woman in a gray whale entered the Ensenada de La Paz and swam with a group of dolphinsgiving an unusual natural spectacle.

The sighting occurred this Tuesday morning, between 10:15 and 10:30 a.m., during a tour operated by Manglitours. The captain Guillermo Méndez and the guide Manuel Higuera They drove the boat towards the area where moments before they had detected the presence of the cetacean, which was approximately eight meters long.

"I was a little desperate because people were not arriving, because we saw the whale about 20 minutes before 10:00. We saw it from a distance, but we didn't want to get close so as not to move it. Tourism arrived after 10:10 and I told them that there was a whale, and asked if we could deviate a little from the route that Manglitours normally takes, and they told me: 'yes, Mr. Guillermo, you are the captain', so I went straight to the whale and we saw it very quickly. It was beautiful," said the captain.

Although this is not the first time that a whale has entered the inlet, Méndez commented that it is not a frequent occurrence; his last similar sighting happened six or seven years ago. In addition, the following have also been observed in this area whale sharks.

The most striking moment of the sighting occurred when the dolphins, in an apparent act of cooperation, helped the whale stay in the channel to prevent it from stranding in shallower water.

"Today it was wonderful that we saw a whale accompanied by dolphins. There was a moment when the whale deviated a little bit from the channel and there is a mountain range of sand there and it kind of tried to get into the mountain range of sand, but we were surprised how the dolphins got in front of it trying to divert it to get it further into the channel. I quickly grabbed the signal and also got in front of the whale (with the speedboat) and it grabbed towards the channel," he said.

The sighting of the gray whale confirms the natural wealth of the Ensenada de La Paza marine sanctuary where visitors can observe dolphins, shorebirds, turtles and a great diversity of marine species.

The great voyage of the gray whale

The gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) is one of the largest cetaceans, measuring between 11 and 15 meters and weighing up to 30 tons. It performs one of the longest migrations in the world, traveling more than 9,000 kilometers in three months, from the seas of Alaska to the west coast of the Baja California peninsula and the Gulf of Californiawhere it breeds between December and April.