I've seen blue whales in the Azores, but all my encounters there don't even come close to the blue whale experience I had in the sea of Cortez in Mexico (also known as the Gulf of California). It didn't take too much time out on the water for me to realise it's arguably the best blue whale watching location in the world. Ok I still have some hotspots to visit, but so far it's up there. I feel extremely lucky and honoured that I was invited to join blue whale researchers from the Great whale Conservancy for the first day of their 19th Baja blue whale research season. A much better experience than joining a tourist excursion, especially for a biologist like me. As soon as we got to the the area we started seeing the tall unmistakable blows of blue whales in all directions. We spent the next hours going from whale to whale, spending just enough time with each one to get good quality ID photos. By the end of the day we counted 12 different individuals that we managed to photograph! The most memorable was by far the first whale. This whale was named "White eyes", due to the white marks on the underside of his tail (see the photo below). White eyes is one of the most recognisable blue whales in the world and one of the most sighted whales in the past quarter century in Mexican waters. White eyes is known to be an adult male and he has also been observed to spend a lot of time off upper California. I've read that this individual has been encountered since, and I hope that he is still doing well out there in the big blue
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