2017-02-09 San Diego and Ensenada

We left San Diego through a shroud of fog and marine haze. We expected to see whales and dolphins on this first day of our voyage to the islands of the Revillagigedo Archipelago, but the veiled weather stayed with us all this day and most of the next. The seas were rolling gently and allowed most of us to develop our sea legs. Our quest required a stop in Ensenada to clear Mexican Customs, which gave us the opportunity to look for birds in the harbor.

Amy McAndrews and Jorge Montejo comprised the bird team, and being that birds were my strongest interest on this voyage, I found myself in their company as often as I could manage. It only took a few seconds on deck with them to realize high skill levels they brought to the expedition. The seamless manner in how they could identify a spec of movement on the horizon through their binoculars and turn it into an identification through a series of field marks, one observing the head, the other the tail, one described the back, the other the underside. Each of them had a camera and about 400mm of lens and pictures would be taken and reviewed to refine the identification. They were a well-oiled machine and fit hand and glove, rendering bird records, Jorge keeping numbers in his head and Amy adding his numbers to hers in her notebook after recording the Lat-Lon coordinates every 30 minutes or so. Not only did I learn a lot from these two, there was a very playful nature about them that was not lost on me. I found out Jorge’s nickname among his friends is “Payasote” which I believe means big clown in Spanish. He is always full of mischief. (more on this later)

Images from this day below: