Thousands Watch Whales Depart Calif. Port

Thousands Watch Whales Depart Calif. Port
Whales Following 2 Tugboats, Officials Say


WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Hundreds of people lining the shoreline around the Port of Sacramento Sunday for the most popular show in town -- watching two wayward humpback whales circle the port -- had a nice surprise on Sunday afternoon.

The whales began following two tugboats that are headed out of the port and toward the Pacific Ocean. As of Sunday afternoon, the whales had moved about five miles closer to the ocean.

The California Highway Patrol urged people to stay away from the area where the whales had been circling, but for a sixth day in a row, thousands showed up. About 10,000 people have turned out thus far to watch the whales, officials said.


The CHP recommended if people do drive to Sacramento, they should bring water and a lot of patience due to the big crowds.

Scientists have been planning to resume efforts Tuesday to lure the pair back to the Pacific Ocean by using dozens of boats and noises of pipes banging underwater to corral the whales back toward the ocean.

Lt. Gov. John Garamendi said Friday at a news conference he was naming the whales Delta and Dawn, after the Helen Reddy song.

Garamendi said the name Delta came from the body of water the whales are lost in and Dawn because it brings in a new day.

On Friday, for the second straight day, a marine mammal rescue crew aboard a Coast Guard cutter played recorded sounds of other humpbacks feeding to the mother whale and calf stranded at the Port of Sacramento, where the two hit a dead-end after traveling 90 miles through San Francisco Bay and up the Sacramento River.

The whales were not responding to the sounds, but a similar recording procedure worked in 1985 with a humpback nicknamed Humphrey, which swam in the delta for nearly a month before returning to the Pacific.

However, biologists said the situation facing them near Sacramento is more complicated. It involves a mother and calf, rather than a single whale, that are much farther into the delta than Humphrey was. The injuries add another dimension, as scientists say they do not know how the wounds might affect the whales' behavior.

"It's brand-new territory. It's not like we're applying something we have a lot of experience with in the past. It's essentially an experiment," said Pieter Folkens, a biologist with the Alaska Whale Foundation who was part of the rescue effort. "We really can't have high expectations of a positive outcome. We're certainly doing our best."

Meanwhile, the rescue efforts are taking place inside a very industrial port, where business operations continue.

"The current vessel in port now is the Jin Quan, unloading 31,000 tons of bulk cement. They're scheduled to complete operations on Tuesday at which time they'd like to depart," Mike Luken with the Port of Sacramento said.

There is another ship scheduled to come in that same day, which gives all the more reason why rescuers are hoping their sound experiments will be successful.

"We want to be as careful and as cautionary as possible because we really do not want to stress the mother or calf in any way because they are compromised by the injuries."

Biologists hope to get the whales back into the ocean, where food is more plentiful and the salt water can heal their cuts, apparently inflicted by a boat propeller when the mammals were in the river.

The failure of attempts to use whale sounds could be related to the recordings used. They were of Alaskan whales that might be part of a different pod than the one the mother and calf belong to.

"This is a humpback probably from a different population, probably the Mexico-California population," Folkens said. "So it's kind of like speaking Chinese to somebody from Boston, but at least you recognize that it might be another member of the same species."

The good news on Friday was that biologists did not detect any significant changes in their health from a day earlier, Gulland said.

"Both mother and calf are still swimming and breathing and surfacing at similar rates as they were over the past few days," she said.

Even if the recordings eventually work, scientists said it could take anywhere from several days to several weeks to lure the whales back to the bay.

When boat and whale collide

When boat and whale collide
Human beings never cease to amaze me. Like the Juneau man who managed to snap a few quick shots of his pug getting whisked away by Romeo the Wolf, a tourist last summer managed to document his wife’s dramatic encounter with a humpback whale while aboard a tour boat in Stephens Passage.

On Aug. 15, 2006, Kimberly Kanaga was aboard the Awesome Orca (owned by Orca Enterprises) when a humpback whale collided with the boat and sent her careening forward, hitting the dashboard and apparently giving her a concussion.

Korry Keeker first reported the story Aug. 18.

After the story ran, he received an e-mail from Kimberly’s husband Mike, who detailed his version of what happened:

The boat slowed when approaching the area where other captains were watching a pod of Humpbacks. We had spotted 3 blasts (Two in front of us and one to the front-right of us. I have pictures of this whale.) The one I took pictures of was at the two o’clock position about 200 ‘ away. The captain continued to motor toward the ones directly in front of us. (He did not reverse the vessel at anytime.) The captain looked at my daughter and said, “Look, look there’s one coming under us!” (At this time we had people standing on the top deck and hanging out of the windows.) He did not take any evasive actions like turning to the left to deliver a glancing blow or yelling for us to hold on. (My 13 year old daughter was kneeling on the seat looking out the open window directly behind the captain’s seat and would have flown out if I had not grabbed her when he said that.) Instead, we collided head-on into the back of the whale as it was rolling, lifting the front of the boat to the left causing Kim to fly head-first from her standing position (Front left seat) to the captain’s area, hitting her forehead on the blunt, aluminum dashboard resulting in a concussion and interior/exterior stitching of her forehead. We were the only passengers in the front of the boat. The others had walked to the back to stand outside or climb up the ladder to the viewing platform.

Tour boats are obviously not supposed to collide with whales. It’s particularly bad when the whales are protected as an endangered species by the Endangered Species Act. As a result, Orca Enterprises was charged with violating the important rule that says boats must stay 100 yards from the whales. The company must pay a $9,000 fine ($2,000 was suspended if it avoids another similar incident for three years), said NOAA in a press release issued today.

“This case clearly demonstrates that failure to observe the proper whale watching restrictions can result in harm to both whales and humans,” said Scott Allee, a special agent with NOAA.

When I spoke this afternoon to Capt. Larry Dupler of Orca Enterprises, he said that clearly the captain on board the Awesome Orca, Scotty Davis, erred that day.

“Obviously the captain that was on the boat made a mistake,” he said.

Whales often dip out of sight under the water and can resurface anywhere, often close to boats, though collisions are extremely rare.

“This could happen to anybody at any time,” he said.

He also said that it would have been easy to fire the captain after the incident, but they company decided to keep him on because he was a good captain and this incident will only make him a better one.

Mike Kanaga e-mailed a series of photos, which start innocently enough with a series of spectacular whale photos. It ends with a few rather gory shots so beware.