A slightly gray and still day greeted the Sea Lion as she lay at her anchorage near the Boca de Soledad at the northern end of Bahia Magdalena. We would be spending the day in what is called a nursery lagoon. It is here that the mother gray whales prepare their babies for the long and arduous journey to feeding grounds some 5,000 miles away in northern Alaska.

Bette Lu, our Expedition Leader, outlined our day's activities during her usual breakfast announcement. We would be leaving by Zodiac and cruising through out the bay watching mother and baby gray whales pairs, in hopes of closer looks and encounters with these unusual marine mammals.

The thin gray cloud covering soon lifted from the sky and the lighting was magnificent as pair after pair of cow-calf gray whales moved leisurely through the greenish-blue waters of this protected lagoon. Slowly a small gray whale face would lift from the water and look at what appeared to be a large black floaty toy filled with very happy viewers! Again and again we were greeted by what appeared to be a very curious miniature gray whale face. Looking into that young eye, we could only wonder through our minds eye, are we sending out as much joy as is appearing in our faces? Does this small one-month-old gray whale sense our great pleasure in being in such close proximity to a marine world that is so different from our own terrestrial world? No matter what might be communicated or understood between ourselves in Zodiacs and an infant gray whale and it's mother, we did know we would be taking home an extraordinary visual memory that would be shared in story after story.