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Writer's pictureDr. Rob Williams

UNPUBLISHED ARTICLE: "Fever Dreaming: Mobula Murmurations Beneath The Baja"

Updated: Oct 28

TITLE: Fever Dreaming: Mobula Murmurations Beneath The Baja

AUTHOR: Rob Williams / contact@doctorrobwilliams.com

WORD COUNT: 1063

IMAGES: available upon request

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"Aqui!" Capitano Fernando says quietly, gesturing with massive, brown fisherman hands towards the north, across the Sea of Cortez’s rippling iridescent surface.


“Remember, guys, no splashing with your fins, and no sudden movements,” reminds Natalia, as six of us – masked, snorkeled, and flippered - slip into the warm greenish blue, quietly making our way towards a spot ten meters off our boat’s bow.


The sea’s silence below blends with a small drone’s whirring whine just a few meters above the shimmering surface, as operator Chris “Gaucho” guides us across the water. Below, rotating beams of light shoot up from the depths, the sun and sea conspiring to cast dancing and spinning patterns, like a magical marine discotheque, through the watery void.

Masked eyes moving between surface and sea, I feel myself become amphibious, softening into snorkeled inhales and exhales, slowing down my heart, which (once again) I realize is racing, with the anticipation of…what?


And then, below us and off to our starboard side, it comes – silently sliding towards us in seeming slow motion.


A “Fever.”


Dozens, no, more like hundreds of mobula rays moving in a multilayered and ever-shifting body, flow into our view, their wing tips gently undulating in fluttering unison more graceful than any aerial avian murmuration. As my heart expands within my chest, the rays fluidly weave their way forward, synchronously shifting their direction below us as if guided by an unseen force.


Having come to Baja to scout professional travel and breathwork opportunities, I suddenly notice my breath is suspended - as astonished as I am, perhaps, in the face of this Fever’s silent and surreal magnificence. My arms, meanwhile, are unconsciously mimicking mobula movements, as my amphibious colleagues jockey into GoPro friendly positions to capture the Fever for posterity.


Our fearless leader, Off The Grid’s Natalia Moreno (a self-described Californian-Mexican “border baby” and ex-Montessori teacher with two former marriages and three kids in play) coaches us to stay to the Fever’s side, rather than risk spooking the mobula from above. I try to comply, marveling at how effortlessly the mobula below me - decisively and collectively - shift directions at will.


To my starboard side, fellow divers Sanket, a “seafari” newbie and digital network engineer from India who signed up for our trip just days before, and Darin, a Kentucky-based energy trader who looks like the underwater twin of Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool, are both feverishly deploying their underwater cameras, while veteran diver Flo from San Diego (@ZenFlowNature on Instagram) flippers down deep below the Fever, her stick pole camera in hand. “I was a scientist who thought I knew everything, and then I had a near-death biking accident, and realized I know nothing,” she had explained to me on the beach earlier that morning. “To be accepted by wild creatures here in Baja, this is my hope.”


Flo’s refreshing perspective - hubris transformed into humility - suggests how quickly we reach the limits of scientific understanding when confronted by mesmerizing mobula magic. Sure, Systema Naturae classifies mobula thusly: Chondrichthyes (class) chordata (phylum) eukaryota (domain) mobulidae (family) rafinesque (genus). Indeed, we know that these “devil rays” can grow as large as seventeen feet, jump two meters into the air (no one knows why – looks like “joy” to me?), dive nearly two kilometers, swim as fast as twelve knots per hour, weigh as much as 1600 kilograms (equivalent to a Jeep Cherokee), and gather by the thousands once annually (why now?) - aqui, in Baja's Sea of Cortez (why here?).


But beyond this?


Only the depths of our ignorance.



After what feels like a transcendent timeless moment in flow with the Fever ("Mas de una hora," Capitano Fernando later tells us), we grudgingly make our way back to the boat. As I prepare to board, I look down one last time and notice my dear friend and dive buddy Cara Blake, a Floridian mermaid with a deep passion for the ocean and wild creatures, surrounded by hundreds of mobula, Flo filming just beyond her. A few minutes later, the two return, silently ascending the ladder and moving to the stern, where we give them space, as we notice tears welling up in Cara’s eyes.


She says not a word about her experience, until I ask her more than one week later after we all returned home, what happened down there.


“Just the sensation of the mobula encircling me,” Cara explains to me over the phone. “I stopped moving, and kicking, and I felt my heart racing, not because I was scared, but because it was so intense, and beautiful and magical.”


I ask her, as a veteran diver, to sit with the experience a bit longer, and then compose and send me a voice text. She agrees, and a few days later, shares her impressions.


“I was talking to the mobula in my mind, giving gratitude, and feeling like I was transcending my human realm into connecting with all there is,” she muses via her voice text. “It felt like I was there forever, and yet, not long enough. I lost track of time. My dive partner Flo was excited, even remembering the moment – ‘they were swimming around you, and surrounding you, and it was so mesmerizing…’”


I then call Cara, listening as she shares a bit more about what she remembers.


“I gave gratitude to the ocean, and to the mobula, and just went back to the boat and was speechless,” she tells me. “It was a gift, to be really present, and pay attention to the feelings and sensations we get in such a moment, feelings which seem to merge into the most beautiful experiences we can have.”


Cara then recounts observations from her yesterday's visit to her massage therapist, who noticed a difference in Cara post-mobula murmuration. Your body may be responding to the memory of your mobula encounter, the therapist explains to her, imprinted on your body and in your mind.


“I was on a high for days afterwards,” Cara tells me before we hang up. “I am still not fully here.”


“The sea remains the final unseen, untouched, and undiscovered wilderness,” muses James Nestor in his book Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves, “the planet’s last great frontier.”


What does it mean to see, to touch, to discover – the mobula?


The Fever?


Flo’s voice echoes in my mind.


“I realize I know nothing.”


Fever dreaming – encounters with the mysterious murmurations of mobula (and other wild creatures) - is contagious.


And to the mobula, we humbly say – “thank you - all of you.”

 

 

 

 

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