(David) Scientists tell us that in the last two centuries, Earth's population of whales has fallen by 80%.

Gray whales were one of the most endangered cetaceans.

Until stern conservation measures offered them protection.

Now they can reliably make their annual migration from the Gulf of Alaska to the coast of Baja California.

In a few select places they exhibit a most remarkable behavior.

(Announcer) Funding for In the Americas by David Yetman was provided by Robert and Carol Dorsey.

Additional funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Laura and Arch Brown and by the Guilford Fund.

(David) Because Baja California is mostly hyper arid desert, it has only two large cities.

Tijuana in the north and La Paz, 600 miles to the south.

Fortunately for us, the small former mission town of Loreto has an international airport.

From there, it will take us nearly 6 hours to cross the peninsula to the lagoon that hosts the Great Whale Migration.

This is Conception Bay on the eastern coast of Baja, California.

It's one of the glories of the entire peninsula, which is about 700 miles long, the second longest in the world.

Most of the tourist attraction in Baja, California, is on the Sea of Cortez, which once was known as one of the richest marine bodies in the world.

Less known is Baja California's Pacific Coast, which is less accessible, wilder and drier.

But it is there that gray whales come each year and visit especially the Laguna San Ignacio And they have a reputation for being extra special.

The Baja California Peninsula has a backbone of rough volcanic mountains with very few East-West routes.

To cross, we must first drive an hour and a half north from Conception Bay to the port town of Santa Rosalia.

In the area of Santa Rosalia and the central Gulf Coast of Baja, California.

Indigenous people have known that there was copper here for thousands of years, and European settlers realized also that there was copper.

But in the late 19th century, French engineers came in, hearing that there was copper and decided that there was enough that they could put in the infrastructure, build a mine, smelt the ore and get it out of here at a profit.

What you need first, if you're going to do that, is a deep water port where ships can have enough depth to move in heavy ships and be loaded and get out without getting stuck in the bottom.

And the French figured there was enough copper here that they would invest heavily and they built a huge infrastructure for mining copper, including a smelter.

And the town still shows the remains of the French presence, including the little gate that I'm holding on to here.

Santa Rosalia is a French heritage town in many different ways.

The French were present in the Santa Rosalia area for almost 60 years from the 1880s, late 1940s.

Their presence is everywhere and powerful.

That presence extends to the church.

Believe it or not, this church was designed and built under the supervision of Gustave Eiffel, the architect of the Eiffel Tower.

It won first prize in the Brussels World's Fair in 1889, was disassembled, brought here and constructed in this plaza.

It is built basically of metal.

A clear example of how the French were able to influence everything in Santa Rosalia.

From Santa Rosalia, we turn inland across a brooding landscape of youthful volcanoes to the oasis town of Saint Ignacio.

It's an oddity in Baja, California, a place with abundant water.

The volcano called Three Virgins or Tres Virgenes may have erupted since there were people living in this area, perhaps within the last 10,000 years.

There are even reports from the 18th century missionaries of something that looked like an eruption.

But the heritage of volcanism is everywhere.

In some places, valleys have been carved into vast lava flows, and in those valleys, the soil becomes very rich and water seeps out of the deep rock and leaves oases such as the oasis of San Ignacio, where the Jesuits took advantage of the water conditions there to turn it into an abundant oasis.

The church and the community were named after Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order.

The Jesuits came to Baja, California, hoping to convert the Indians to Christianity.

They ran into a lot of problems.

They wanted to teach them agriculture, and there was not enough water in the peninsula to support agriculture almost anywhere.

Right here is about the only place.

But they also brought with them diseases that killed off most of the Indian population.

And so the Jesuits efforts never came to much here.

This church is not built by Jesuits.

It was built in the late 1780s by Dominicans.

A monument to the efforts of the missionaries and the people who have maintained it for more than 200 years.

The enduring legacy in San Ignacio is not so much the Christianization, but what the Jesuits brought with them, date palms.

There are very few places where dates will flourish in Baja California, but this is one of them and has become a major crop for export.

And the dates are really, really good.

From San Ignacio to the lagoon of the same name we had due south where the roadway meets the water's edge, the pavement ends and a rough dirt track penetrates the desert to our camp.

Along the way, we cross a landscape of strange, exotic desert plants.

They are found nowhere else in the world, not even in other parts of Mexico.

The peninsula has been separated from the mainland of Mexico for at least 5 million years, and in that time, evolution has taken over the peninsula.

The Mexican government has recognized the importance of that and set aside large portions of the peninsula as a protected area.

And here in the heart of the Vizcaino desert, we see an array of the plants that make Baja, California, unusual for this planet.

And we█re within a couple of miles of the water here.

The effect of the dew condensing every night gives the plants an advantage that they lack in other parts.

It makes the plants grow better here, they get bigger and lusher, in spite of only two inches of rain a year.

We are not far from the Laguna San Ignacio, the great body of water where we will look forward to seeing the gray whales.

The whale watching season, in San Ignacio Lagoon is only about three months long.

That's when the whales are here.

It ends in the first week in April because most of the whales have split back north.

The camps that are set up where people can come and stay and get on the boats are limited in number and size.

This is the bone yard (Ricardo) Out there, we see the animals alive, but then here we can see what remains from them.

(David) These are some very serious bones.

These are ribs from... (Ricardo) Ribs from the gray whale.

(David) From the gray whale.

(Ricardo) Yeah.

We have some serious heavy bones like this lower mandible.

(David) How much does an adult whale weigh?

Full grown.

(Ricardo) Well, they're going to weigh about 35 tons of weight, depending if they are pregnant or if the females are larger and bigger than the males.

(David) 35 tons?

(Ricardo) Yes.

(David) And a lot of that is bone.

Wow.

So what is this one, then?

(Ricardo) This is the scapula.

(David) So that's my shoulder blade?

(Ricardo) Yes.

(David) I see some things here that are not whales.

(Ricardo) Yeah.

We have other other friends here from the lagoon.

Are animals that also are common here.

We have some California sea lion.

(David) Look at the teeth on that.

The whale has every bone that we have.

(Ricardo) Yeah, well, they are mammals, like us.

Some interesting parts, like the vestigial hips that are where the back legs used to be before the before they evolved, or they go going back to the ocean.

(David) So they were originally very evolved from land creatures.

(Ricardo) Yeah.

(David) And they had legs and everything.

And then gradually in the sea they didn't need the legs.

(Ricardo) Yeah.

(David) And this is a, a disc boy if a whale gets a slip disc It's got a problem.

(Ricardo) Yeah.

And you can also use it as a Frisbee now.

(David) Going to be kind of hard to throw.

That's a pretty heavy Frisbee.

Tell me about how important the tides are here.

(Ricardo) Here in the lagoon, the tides sometimes can be one or two meters, it change.

And they are really important because here a lot of animals come to eat after when it's low tide, we can see a lot of birds.

They use it as a source of food.

(David) As soon as the the tide goes out, the birds descend in there, don█t they?

(Ricardo) Yeah.

(David) Hunting for snails and clams.

(Ricardo) They look for snails, clams.

We can see sometimes the seagulls picking clams.

(David) And we can see their tracks all over.

(Ricardo) All over here too.

If you can see, we have mangroves.

And they used to be there.

But when there is low tide, they like to come here.

And we have birds that have really peculiar kind of beak that helps them to take the food easier from the mouth.

And then that's why we can see a lot of shells also, because they break them and they eat them here.

We have all kinds of birds here in the lagoon, some migratory, some stay all year round.

We have terns, we have the royal tern and the Caspian tern.

We have great blue heron here and we have little blue heron.

It's funny to see them on the low tide because they look like they are dancing and trying to look for food on the water.

And we have some like their reddish egret that they are beautiful gray with the red neck and that like to hang.

Also, when there is no tide, you will see them here hunting and looking for food.

We have a really nice population of ospreys all around the lagoon and right now the we have chicks in some of their nests.

(David) Ospreys require marine life, fish primarily.

The females will pick at their fish and feed little pieces to the chicks, and they build nests that will remain there and they use them year after year after year.

The Laguna San Ignacio is for some reason, a favorite place of gray whale and has been for probably millions of years.

It is on the West Coast, which has a lot of very gradual water courses.

Thousands and thousands of years ago, huge amounts of sediments came down a huge wash and built up this sort of river bottom out here and it became this lake.

It is now saltwater, of course, but it is the ideal place for the gray whales to come.

And the winter time they use some feeding, but mostly to raise the females, to raise their calves and the males to come and enjoy the life along with their females.

And occasionally the young.

(Maldo) [In Spanish] When there's a lot of wind, it creates more waves.

And there may be whales that want to approach the boat.

But if there's a lot of waves, the boat moves a lot and can take you out quickly.

[In Spanish] So it's better to have less wind and less current.

[In Spanish] We are in the North Bay and right now at the peak of the season, the whales come closer to the bay and when the tide is at its lowest, the whales exercise in the waves like surfing.

[In Spanish] I think they are training for a long trip up to Alaska.

So they take advantage of the strong current to exercise their muscles.

[In Spanish] Sure some we give names to you and others because of their marks or scars or something like that.

We can already recognize them.

[In Spanish] There█s one we named Bazooka.

Crazy, Patchy, Crooked Mouth.

There's several names we used to identify them.

[In Spanish] There are many whales that are friendly, but not all of them are friendly.

So we have to look for the good ones.

[In Spanish] If we can't find any friendly whales or any whales that want to make contact with the boat.

What can we do?

Nothing.

[In Spanish] All we can do is beg and beg.

Kind of like a partner if they make you angry.

[In Spanish] And even though the whales are wild animals, not domestic, they come towards the boat.

So it's an incredible thing.

[In Spanish] (Ricardo) The friendly behavior that they have with the humans, impressive.

And it's interesting to realize that they were almost extinct in this lagoons not a long time ago, not many generations ago.

And we see how the mothers is still teaching the babies to to make that connection.

(David) Each guide seems to have their own particular strategy for attracting the whale.

They encourage the master to splash the water.

Somehow the mythology is that that brings them but sometimes they will sing to them, sometimes they will throw water in a bucket.

I don't know what songs that they sing, but it█s probably Come Hither My Love [singing].

Or come fly with me.

[singing].

Let█s fly, let█s fly, let█s fly.

(Kim) It was an amazing experience to touch the whale, just feel it like rubbery.

And then they just seem to scooch closer like they enjoy the tactile sensation of being touched.

As I was rubbing it, it blew air up through its blowhole.

And so it scares you and so you jump back and after it did that, it kind of turns to the side and you just see this huge eye like looking up at you like excited to see you.

You feel as though it's excited to see you.

It was great.

It had little tiny whiskers around its mouth.

it's quite an amazing privilege to be out here, out in nature and have the opportunity to touch an animal, a creature as a magnificent as a gray whale.

(David) In all the world, this is the one place where the gray whales are sure to come.

In the last couple of years, whales everywhere in the world have been under enormous stress.

Every population of whales is falling, and this year in particular, the gray whales have been under huge pressure because of global warming.

The whole lagoon, The Lagoon San Ignacio is big.

It's probably 150 to 200 square miles.

It's not very deep.

It█s only oh, 50 or 60 feet deep, deep enough for the whales.

But it is a big body of water.

And because it's protected from the ocean, you get a lot of different things seeking refuge from that.

The mangrove swamps uh, can't take a real heavy pounding from the surf, but boy, are they ever important for marine life.

On the Pacific side of California, there are two kinds of mangroves.

There's red and white.

Here we see the difference in the leaves of the two mangroves.

In my left hand is the red mangrove.

The leaf is larger, it's got a point and it's waxier.

And in my other hand is the white mangrove, the leaves are smaller, rounder and they aren't quite as waxy, but they both tolerate saltwater in the most miraculous way.

They provide refuge and nurseries for enormous numbers of animals.

Small fishes can get in here to escape predators and grow big enough to where they can successfully elude them.

Birds can hide in them from predators.

They can also hide in them so their nests are safe and they act as a miniature desalinization plant.

They remove the salt and cast it aside back into the water and then use that distilled water that they need for plant growth.

Why do the gray whales travel 6000 miles south to give birth in this lagoon?

Why not just do it up in the Gulf of Alaska where they feed, where all the food is?

(Ricardo) (David) Send them to daycare and then kindergarten here.

(Ricardo) (David) And then first or second grade maybe.

But then in high school, they're out into the... (Ricardo) (David) How much do the babies weigh when they're born?

(Ricardo) When they do this spy hopping, that's to have a better perspective of what's what's happening around them.

It's interesting that when you see the gray whales and you see them coming from the front, you will notice that they are, we say right handed or left handed because they have a favorite side to go under and take the food in.

When they don't have the barnacles on one side, that means that they prefer that side to take the food.

(Kim) It's something I've long wanted to do.

I've heard of other people having the opportunity.

I've seen whales from a distance, but never up close and personal, and never did I imagine that I'd have the opportunity to actually touch one and be close enough that I could observe the entire creature, it was amazing.

(David) Whales require colossal amounts of food just to sustain themselves, much less to raise their young.

The gray whales are called baleen whales.

They they don't have teeth there and they feed along the bottom and filter through the sand, through the sediments at the bottom and filter out.

And you can see and so they get their food that they get, which is largely phytoplankton, very small organisms that live in the ocean.

Without that food, they can't grow.

In the cold waters of the Gulf of Alaska and the Antarctic, there are incredibly large amounts of the kind of food that they need, whether it's the toothed whales, which are like orcas with those big teeth or blue whales and gray whales with the baleen, there's so much food there.

The gray whales get that food in the Gulf of Alaska, when it goes down, they suffer.

So there's a very close connection between whales and their environment.

Join us next time in the Americas with me David Yetman.

Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell were once the pride of the United States Bureau of Reclamation, but burgeoning demand from thirsty users, climate change and drought have forced a painful reevaluation of the dam and all it represents.

For some, that represents an enormous tragedy.

For others, it is an unexpected boon for the recovery of a river, a submerged canyon, and a vast ecosystem.

(Announcer) Funding for In the Americas by David Yetman was provided by Robert and Carol Dorsey.

Additional funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Laura and Arch Brown and by the Guilford Fund.