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Journey to the Sea of Cortez
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12645 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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6 / 1987 |
2,202 Words |
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Peter Skinner
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It erupted from the glassy waters of Canal de Salsipuedes, a mighty oceanic leviathan of cascading water - shimmering - indelibly etching metal images of power, grace, and enormity.
The humpback whale had a sense of humor. He entertained five humans in a small inflatable craft in the Sea of Cortez, knowing full well that no one in his amazed, applauding audience had a camera.
Even with a camera, we would have missed that first tremendous breach when the whale's thirty-plus feet of black hulk cleared the calm surface. But the whale's performance - breaching and spy hopping - improved the odds of obtaining some impressive photographs - if we had had a camera.
We - members of the Brooks Institute of Photography Sea of Cortez expedition - were retracing the 1940 route taken by John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts. Like proverbial fishermen, we would subject friends and colleagues in Santa Barbara, California, to "the one that got away" stories.
Why were we cameraless? We'd been diving for the evening's meal - scallops, maybe lobsters - so we left photographic equipment behind.
We captured a variety of images during the past few days from the area, and we now wanted to capture fresh seafood for dinner. So the cameras stayed on Just Love, the fiftyseven-foot former Alaskan seine trawler, now owned and operated by Brooks Institute of Photography as a photographic and research vessel.
After witnessing this exhibition of nature's exuberance, we headed back to Just Love. With cameras in hand, a group of us cruised around Isla Salsipuedes hoping the whale would show himself again. He did, and we took numerous photographs. But having seen the whale's previous performance, we were disappointed, and the photographs paled by comparison to what could have been.
We went to the Sea of Cortez to take pictures, and mostly, we were not disappointed. Glorious sunsets, marine life, nesting osprey, the people of small towns and fishing villages, dolphin by the hundreds, gray whales, humpback whales, orca, diving birds, the awkward-looking and curious bluefooted booby birds, seagull chicks, towering cactus, volcanic craters, the splendor of day's dawning, mangrove-lined waterways, the colorful and varied undersea dwellers, and boat-life activities provided a multitude of photographic opportunities.
Retracing a romantic route
In 1940, writer John Steinbeck accompanied his marine biologist friend Ed Ricketts on a specimen collecting trip from Monterey, California, to Mexico's Sea of Cortez. They were not the first to venture into this expansive body of water starting about fifty miles south of the United States. Nor were they the last. But Steinbeck's book From the Log of the Sea of Cortez enhanced the romanticism of the area. Although adjacent to two nations, the entire region is sparsely populated and exudes the feeling of a frontier territory, where one feels like a pioneering adventurer and explorer. For several years, Ernie Brooks, Brooks Institute of Photography president, an accomplished photographer fascinated by the sea, talked of retracing the route of
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