From Devil Fish to Friendly Leviathan: Guilty Wildlife Histories and American Gray Whale Ecotourism in Baja

This paper explores the phenomenon of U.S. citizens and residents participating in gray whale ecotourism trips to Baja, Mexico to touch, pet, and kiss gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus). This interactive whale-watching practice is not allowed in U.S. waters, primarily due to the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) of 1972, which prohibits the take and harassment of marine mammals, preventing boats on the whales\u27 migratory route along the U.S. coast from approaching them closely or attempting to interact with them. I establish context for this case study within the broad history of human-whale relationships in North America, and within the local history of whaling, conservation, and tourism in Baja. I examine nature and travel writing works about gray whale tourism in Baja to ask if this whale-watching practice is problematically anthropomorphic or if it is a feasible route to ethically-sound interspecies interactions. I argue that these travel and nature writing works grapple with a collective sense of guilt, shame, and horror in the face of American historical treatment of wildlife, and that they transition this guilty history into descriptions of whales\u27 forgiveness, imagining a more harmonious future for all. Building on scholarship from tourism studies, environmental ethics, and animal studies, I track the ways in which writers attribute semi-sacred forgiveness, grace, and trust to whales in their attempts to reconcile contemporary whale interactions with the Baja\u27s American whaling history. I argue further that forgiveness narratives based on temporary encounters do not allow room for the challenging daily work of learning to live more ethically, responsibly, and humanely with the rest of non-human nature