Marc Riley's Big Blue adventure

Whales and dolphins inspire passion and interest in lots of us, and BBC 6 Music’s Marc Riley is one of them. We invited him to shed some light on this little known love of his, and to share some of the adventures he has had with Big Blue Live’s Mark Carwardine.

"I first got to know Mark when I prized his e-mail address from the good people at the BBC Wildlife Magazine. I was on Radio 1 in the afternoons and conveniently the BBC publications PR office was right opposite ours. I’d been reading Mark's columns in it for a good while and thought I’d be cheeky and ask him for some advice about whale watching in Mull. This would have been in 2001. I didn’t really expect a reply but I got one! After the initial introduction I continued to pester Mark about this ’n' that and a year or so later Mark invited me on a fantastic trip to Norway to swim with orca!!! This we did; it was an incredible experience and it remains my favourite wildlife encounter to this day - and heaven knows I’ve had some truly great ones over the ensuing years.

Following Norway was a trip to Iceland, which was great but it wasn’t until 2009 that Mark offered me a chance to go on the trip of a lifetime to Baja, California - 10 nights on a boat housing around 30 whale watchers.

We set off from San Diego and with the first choppy day behind us we settled into what would be 9 days of non-stop wonderment.

As I recall our first encounter was a pod of common dolphins followed by a sortie off the boat and on to the coastline where we met a colony of elephant seals. Huge critters that happily bit and smashed into each other senseless and on some occasions rolled on top of and squashed each other. They were belligerent but characterful creatures and thankfully quite slow and relatively easy to photograph.

Osprey were next, effortlessly catching fish in the shallows and delivering them back to the nest, and then we were swimming with Guadalupe fur seals. Strange animals that on occasion looked otherworldly. They were skittish but we managed to have a great encounter without scaring each other too much.

Days 4 and 5 saw us dropping anchor in the fabulous San Ignacio lagoon, home to countless grey whales and calves. A nursery if you will. This was probably my 2nd most memorable cetacean encounter. You leave the small boat and get in a much smaller one. They’re called Pangas and hold around 14 people. To be so close to so many whales is a huge privilege. The animals were spy-hopping all around us and approaching the Pangas. It was awe-inspiring.

Over the following few days I started to suspect that Mark had sold his soul to the devil in order to keep his charges deliriously happy. His predictions came true time after time.

Day 7

“We expect to see humpbacks today”. We did. In fact we were treated to a furious battle between four males vying for the attention of the sole female. There was ramming…head slapping… tail slapping… even blood! It was thrilling to see, and to cap it off we saw Brydes whales that day too.

Day 8

“We expect to see more humpbacks today”. We did. And a whole load of bottlenose dolphins on top.

Day 9

“We expect to see blue whales, finbacks and maybe sperm whales today”. Surely a tall order to get all three of those? Well, we did! Fantastic encounters with each, another truly memorable day.

And still we were not done. We swam with Californian sea lions, saw a thresher shark, a juvenile hammerhead shark, mobula and manta ray and birds galore.

It was a wonderful time in the most wonderful of places.

When I got back to San Diego I lay on the bed and I swear the whole room was lolling about from side to side. It took a few weeks for my head to stop spinning. Partly from the lengthy time rolling around on the high seas but also from the mind-blowing time I’d had in the company of Mark Carwardine and all these amazing animals.

It’s not the kind of thing everyone gets a chance to do but if such chance arises, please take it with both hands!"

Marc Riley. BBC Radio 6 Music.