Dwarf Sperm Whales Rescued in La Paz

At first sight they looked like dolphins at play but my girlfriend, Maru Sanchez, soon realized they were in trouble, maybe trapped in a net. On the deck of our custom racing cruiser Final Escape, at anchor in the channel at La Paz, Maru was enjoying her first coffee on May 29 as sea mammals made their usual rounds. They couldn’t be whales, could they?

Calling other cruisers to help, I heard myself saying on the VHF, “My girlfriend keeps telling me they’re whales, but they have to be dolphins because of their size.” What I didn’t know is that sperm whales don’t have to be as big as a house — rarely they also come in small packages, known as the Dwarf and Pygmy species. Virtually never sighted at sea, these miniatures are only found occasionally when stranded in shallow water, usually dead already.

At the scene I was joined by Pitt, William and Eran, the captains of Karma Seas, Prana and Patient Pariah. Sure enough there were two Dwarf sperm whales in extreme distress but there was no net, just confusion. Mom was 7’6” long and her baby was only 4 feet. In every way except their size they were the same as their huge cousins, with a lighter, lower coloring like a waterline on a boat.

Were they injured? Certainly there appeared to be plenty of blood. Three times a huge cloud of red filled the sea as the mother thrashed her flipper. But we found no damage in her hind portion so we assumed this was afterbirth being released. Later we discovered that this unusual animal keeps a sack of red ink in its tail, ready to squirt out as a distraction to its enemies, like the black ink of a squid.

Hugging and stroking the whales calmed them down, and there was no more ink. They had wide cuts elsewhere though, sustained from the sharp rocks where the mother insisted on dragging her baby. For two hours we coaxed them to deeper waters, but each time the mother pulled us back to the beach again, presumably because her GPS was telling her to head north and the sand banks of El Mogote weren’t marked on her chartplotter.

It was clear that we needed specialist help and, through Marina de La Paz, it came in the form of the Association for Investigation and Conservation of Marine Mammals in their Habitat. Their enthusiastic team examined the whales and sent me to find towels to act as makeshift slings. All eventually handled by the Mexican Navy and other relevant official bodies, nearly four hours after the initial sighting, both mother and baby were released in deep water outside of La Paz Bay. Since Dwarf sperm whales don’t breach the surface of the sea like their big brothers do, we don’t expect to receive any postcards, but at least they’re swimming in the right direction now.