Gray whales tend to congregate in Bajan waters in the winter months.
A boat full of tourists received an unexpected lift from a gray whale off the coast of Baja California earlier this month.
While Lory Barry was on a whale-watching expedition near the coast of Guerrero Negro, Mexico, a gray whale suddenly appeared near her boat.
According to the video footage that Barra captured, at first, the whale came up to say hello to her human visitors. Then the whale put the small boat on its back and began swimming, giving the passengers an unexpected lift.
“She’s taking us for a ride!” Barra can be heard exclaiming in the video. “She’s going fast, too!”
“She was having so much fun coming to us all for pets and kisses,” Barra wrote on ViralHog. “Twice she lifted our boat gently onto her back and swam away with us. She went fast enough to make a wake through my fingers. I’ve been there many times and this never happens!”
According to Barra’s post, the whale stayed with its human visitors for over two hours. And she was well aware of the humans’ presence. Barra said that the animal “turned to look at me a few times and we had a soul to soul experience between two mammals.”
Barra noted that the whale was about twice the size of the boat and weighed an estimated 30 tons.
As the whale took the boat off her back, she used her pectoral fin and seemed to wave goodbye before swimming away.
Gray whales tend to congregate in Bajan waters for a few months (generally December through early April) for their breeding or mating period.
When the breeding season is over, the gray whales will head to the northern part of the American coast, spending summer off the coasts of states like Alaska, Washington, Oregon, northern California, and Canada’s British Columbia, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
