La Paz – Syndication Server

Watch: Tour boat goes airborne upon hitting whale, sends tourist flying

Video shows at least one tourist being ejected from a tour boat that went airborne when it struck a whale as it returned to port in Baja.

Six tourists were injured when a small Mexican tour boat returning to La Paz on the east coast of Baja California struck a whale, sending the vessel airborne and ejecting at least one passenger.

The incident occurred Friday afternoon around 4:30 as the boat was returning to port after a trip to Isla Espiritu Santo in the Gulf of California, according to the Daily Mail.

The boat was being driven at an “excessive speed,” according to Veracruz Radio. When it struck the whale, the boat went flying and ejected a passenger as it came back down atop the water. It was not known if the person landed back in the boat or in the water.

Representatives of the Mexican Navy treated the injured, including a father and two children, whose injuries were minor, but the 41-year-old mother was hospitalized with a liver injury, a blow to the head and a fractured right hand, according to Veracruz Radio.

Veracruz Radio also reported that the Environmental Attorney’s Office is planning to apply sanctions against the owners of the boat.

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“Mexican regulations require boats involved in whale watching to stay a safe distance from the creatures, but the boat involved in Friday’s incident did not appear to be engaged in whale watching — or watching out for whales,” the Associated Press wrote.

Civil Protection spokesman Benjamin Garcia said in a press conference that the boat’s operators might not have known of the whale’s presence.

“The whale came up from the sea and that is when it pushed the boat, with some passengers falling and suffering injuries,” Garcia said, according to the Mirror. “Three people were hospitalized, one of them seriously, and two others were treated at the port.”

The whale was believed to have been a humpback. Its condition is unknown.

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Boy lands massive grouper, but hopes for a record are dashed

The father of an 11-year-old boy was thinking junior world record after his son landed man enormous leopard grouper last week in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez.

The father of an 11-year-old boy was thinking junior world record after his son landed an enormous leopard grouper last week in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez.

Little did Isaac Amador Davis know that no such record exists.

The grouper, caught by Isaias Amador at Las Animas Island near La Paz, was nearly as long as the boy is tall. Isaac could not locate a certified scale in La Paz so he delivered the catch to Cabo San Lucas to obtain an official weight.

Isaias Amador and father pose with 23.4-pound grouper. Photo: Pisces Sportfishing

The Pisces Sportfishing scale read 23.4 pounds. Massive for a leopard grouper.

Pisces announced via Facebook that paperwork was completed for submission to the International Game Fish Assn. for consideration as a Junior World Record. Isaac Amador Davis also hoped the catch might qualify as a line-class record for 50-pound-test line.

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Pisces stated: “We are happy to see kids like Isaias enjoying the sport and awesome parents supporting them to do what they love and recognizing the value in organizations like IGFA. Congrats once again Isaias!”

https://www.facebook.com/piscessportfishingfleet/posts/10158991734818744

However, Pisces soon discovered that the IGFA maintains only an all-tackle world record for leopard grouper. The all-tackle record, for heaviest fish regardless of line strength, stands at 28 pounds, 10 ounces.

That fish was caught by Robert Wheaton in April 2017, in the Sea of Cortez near Loreto.

Since the IGFA maintains line-class and junior records for dozens of other species, For The Win Outdoors asked why leopard grouper has only one category.

Zack Bellapinga, Angler Recognition Coordinator for the IGFA, said basically that catches do not occur frequently enough for leopard grouper be included in all IGFA award programs.

“I would love for line-class records to be open to all species but that requires a lot more space in our database, which we don’t have, as well as physical space to store all the new record files,” Bellapinga said.

“With this being the case, we have limited line-class records to a set of commonly caught species. I am, however, looking to open more line classes for 2022 and will look into leopard grouper as a potential addition to our current list.”

None of this, of course, should diminish what Isaias has accomplished. His leopard grouper is still one of the largest ever caught, certainly by a young boy, and he landed the fish in only 12 minutes.

–Images courtesy of Pisces Sportfishing

Mysterious deep-sea oarfish found on Baja beach; photos

A deep-sea oarfish has washed up on a Mexican beach for the second time in six weeks, the latest a 20-foot specimen discovered last Friday near La Paz in Baja California Sur.

Serpent-like oarfish, which can measure 30-plus feet, reside in tropical and temperate waters at depths of 600 to more than 3,000 feet. They’re rarely encountered but occasionally become stranded on beaches, dead or dying.

The 20-foot oarfish was found at Pichilingue, a port city inside La Paz Bay, by Fernando Cavalin, Tito Taylor and Laura Lafont. (See photos.)

Cavalin, Hatchery Manager at Earth Ocean Farms in La Paz, told For The Win Outdoors that the biologists were performing a monthly inspection at the facility’s intake area when they spotted the oarfish in the rocks.

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“It was a surprise,” he said of the afternoon discovery. “At first I thought it was alive but it was dead; probably died in the morning.”

Cavalin, who placed the oarfish back into the bay to become food for nearshore critters, told Big Fish that he discovered a much smaller oarfish at Pichilingue in 2015.

Last month, on June 11, an 18-foot oarfish was found dying on a beach in Cozumel, a Mexican island in the Caribbean Sea.

La Paz, capital of Baja California Sur, is on the Sea of Cortez, or Gulf of California. Though oarfish sightings anywhere are rare, a handful of fairly recent sightings have occurred on Sea of Cortez beaches.

Last June, about 100 miles south of La Paz, two brothers on a fishing trip found and revived a juvenile oarfish and watched it swim away, but it was doubtful that the fish survived.

In 2012, in Cabo San Lucas on Baja California’s tip, a 15-foot oarfish washed ashore alive. A crowd of tourists gathered to watch an unsuccessful attempt to revive the animal.

It’s not sure why the denizens occasionally become stranded.

However, scientists believe that because the slender fish live at depths where there are no currents, and because they lack significant body mass, they struggle if they venture too high in the water column.

Cavalin said oarfish in the Sea of Cortez might languish in warmer sea temperatures during the summer, making them vulnerable.

Because of their bizarre appearance, oarfish are believed to have spawned sea monster myths among ancient mariners.

Some people believe that oarfish strandings portend catastrophic events, such as earthquakes. Cavalin dismissed this as superstition, adding: “It is just a fish, like any other.”

–Images showing Fernando Cavalin (black-and-yellow vest), Tito Taylor and Laura Lafont posing with the oarfish are used with the permission of Fernando Cavalin