Heck yes!! Take yesterday, for example. It was a nice day in late July, the first dive day on an Ultimate Whale Shark expedition to Bahia de Los Angeles. We were anchored off Las Animas, north of La Paz. The warm-up dive was great, with loads of fish and California sea lions. Our guests loved it. For the second dive, we explored the north pinnacle with lots of tropical fish and a huge school of jacks that guests swim through like being in the midst of a giant tornado.
We were planning on diving deeper after lunch to search for schooling hammerhead sharks, which are legendary at this site. Then the airplane—our eyes in the sky—showed up, reporting a huge pod of dolphins 6 miles north and heading our way. Whooohooo! That sounded like fun, so we started the engines and headed that way. The airplane then called back, saying they had spotted sperm whales popping out everywhere—at least a dozen of them. They were playing around on the surface and not just logging the way spermies usually do. WOW!!! We deployed our inflatables and headed straight over. Our guests loved the interaction, which only got better when the huge pod of dolphins joined up with the sperm whales. We spent hours with them, and everyone had an amazing time.
Is the airplane worth while?? Well, we would have had a nice day at Las Animas without it, but man, our crew in the airplane made a huge difference to what our guests experienced It’s an amazing tool and has completely changed the texture of our Sea of Cortez trips. Thank you to our pilot, naturalist observer, and trusty Cessna 182.
