Rescuers Try to Lure Lost Whales With Whale Call Sounds

They got lucky with Humphrey. I hope their luck holds out this time. That mom whale and her pup must be very confused right now.

Wayward Humpback Pair Moves Toward Ocean
May 21, 2007
Wayward Humpback Pair Moves Toward Ocean
By CAROLYN MARSHALL
New York Times

WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. The pilgrimage, for some, begins at dawn. They travel by foot, bicycle, scooter and even wheelchair to camp along a dusty riverbank facing a homely industrial port.

The travelers wait quietly, hands held high as they steady binoculars, cameras and even cellphones equipped with a lens. Suddenly, their oohs, ahhs, squeals and shrieks pierce the silence, as a humpback whale breaks the glassy surface of the Sacramento River.

At least 15,000 people have trekked to the river's edge to catch a glimpse of two injured and wayward humpbacks, a mother and calf, first spotted May 13 in a shipping channel in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, about 90 miles off course from their seasonal migration route in the Pacific Ocean between Alaska and Baja California.

But on Sunday, the whales appeared to be heading in the right direction, moving down the shipping channel toward the Pacific Ocean, marine officials said.

By late afternoon, they were about eight miles outside the Port of Sacramento and being escorted by 8 to 10 Coast Guard vessels and other boats, said Bernadette Fees, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Fish and Game, adding, "It's hard to say what prompted them."

At a late-day news briefing on Sunday, marine officials said the whales had suddenly headed down river as two tugboats left the port to meet a cargo vessel carrying fertilizer.

The officials were initially worried that the whales would encounter dangers in busier stretches of water, but were following them at a distance in boats and declared their journey safe so far.

"At first we were worried," as the whales approached the cargo vessel, said Brian Gorman, a spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries service.

But they appeared to pass safely and officials estimated that if the whales kept up their pace, they might reach the ocean within a day, said Ms. Fees.

"We don't know why they came up the river, or why they are moving down," Ms. Fees said. She later added, "As you can see, they are making their own decisions, and we are just trying to keep up with them."

Marine biologists said their challenge now is to help the whales avoid obstacles and wrong turns once they enter the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

At least 15,000 people have trekked to the river's edge to see the mother and calf, first spotted May 13 in the channel about 90 miles off course from their seasonal migration route between Alaska and Baja California.

The whales appeared to be healthy, despite wounds that include a two-foot-long, deep gash on the mother, probably inflicted by the propeller of a shipping vessel or recreational boat, the rescuers said. But the mother soon will need to feed.

Meanwhile, pleas from the authorities to stay home have not stopped the flow of the curious and the concerned. Instead, a spectacular array of people ?- children and the elderly and people speaking Chinese, German, Russian and Spanish ?- have come to the river to wait and watch.

By early afternoon Sunday, as many as 7,000 people had arrived, said an officer with the West Sacramento Police Department. But the police were cracking down on opportunistic vendors, who on Saturday had been selling bottled water and souvenirs, including a $10 T-shirt with the logo "Whale Watch 2007," distinguishing the current event from the 1985 visit of Humphrey, another humpback who lost his way and wandered the delta for nearly a month.

"I read the children's book on Humphrey to my daughters," said Joanne Moylan, a teacher in nearby Davis, Calif., who plans to bring her now-adult children to see Delta and Dawn, as the pair has been named by the state authorities.

Zachary Williams, 9, a visitor on Sunday who claimed his father has been "obsessed" with the whales, seemed unimpressed. "I could be watching this on TV right now," he said.

Courtney Williams, 11, Zachary's sister, conceded that she might have made other plans for the day: "I could be shopping at the mall and getting my nails done."

But their father, Greg Williams, 43, said, "They don't know yet how cool this is. I told them it may seem boring now, but 20 years down the road, they'll be able to say, ?'I saw the whales.' "

Meanwhile, the scientists involved in the rescue efforts have been giddy over the prospect of solving an unusual research challenge.

"We are in new territory; we have never been in a situation where we had a cow-calf pair," this far upriver, said Peiter Folkens, a biologist and one of the rescuers with the Alaska Whale Foundation, during one of the daily news briefings. "This is, essentially, an experiment."

Scientists on Thursday and Friday played whale call recordings, mostly of the mammals feeding, in an effort to draw the whales west. But the recordings, first of pods of whales in Alaska and then of pods in Mexico, may have failed to appeal to the stranded humpbacks because even whales speak different dialects, the scientists said.

The marine experts said they were not worried or panicked at this point. The humpbacks have been in fresh water only for seven days and their injuries appeared to be minor.

In 1985, Humphrey was coaxed to safety by recorded whale sounds, but the researchers then had not tried the tactic until 16 days into Humphrey's 26-day detour.

Bid to Save Whales Into 3rd Week; public trying to help
Bid to Save Whales Drags Into 3rd Week
MARCUS WOHLSEN
May 27, 2007

RIO VISTA, Calif. ?- Everyone seems to have a suggestion to get two wayward whales lingering in the Sacramento River to swim 70 miles back to the Pacific Ocean. One person suggested towing life-sized replicas of orcas behind the whales to scare the recalcitrant mother humpback and her calf. Another proposed placing a giant magnet downriver, since humpbacks are thought to navigate by an internal compass that can sense magnetic north.

On Saturday, veterinarians on a boat shot custom-made syringes with 8-inch needles at the whales in what wildlife officials said was the first time antibiotics have ever been administered to whales in the wild. The treatment is meant to ward off infection in deep wounds that have worsened from long exposure to fresh water.

While rescuers have not tried the hundreds of suggestions they have received via e-mail _ most of which are unfeasible _ they acknowledge that they are running out of ideas.

"This is very much a work in progress," said Trevor Spradlin, a marine mammal biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration working at the rescue scene.

More than two weeks after the whales were first spotted in fresh water, the giant mammals continued to circle in the river. Their once smooth, shiny skin has become dull and rough, and tissue around the gashes likely inflicted by a run-in with a boat was starting to die off, biologists said.

Scientists hastily drew up plans to spray the whales with fire hoses Friday after nearly a week of pipe-banging and whale recordings failed. Scientists used recordings to nudge a male humpback dubbed Humphrey out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in 1985.

The pair got stranded after marking an apparent wrong turn earlier this month and heading upstream until they reached the Port of Sacramento and could go no farther. They turned around on their own Sunday, and swam some 20 miles downriver to the Rio Vista Bridge.

The central problem facing scientists trying to engineer new whale-herding techniques is that, while gentle coaxing has proved ineffective, they fear anything too forceful might make the situation worse. Nets pose a threat of entanglement, biologists said.

Any method that induces panic could separate the whales or send them fleeing, increasing the danger they could become stranded in the mud among the delta's labyrinthine network of sloughs, they said.

During the week, rescuers grew concerned that some of the tactics they tried may have been too stressful for the duo. Some onlookers complained that scientists should stop interfering with the whales and allow them to follow their natural instincts.

The problem with that theory, according to veteran whale watchers, is that the humpbacks' natural sense of direction has been thrown off severely by their 90-mile journey upriver.

"They'd probably like to just go north, but there's no way they can do that," said Ken Balcomb, executive director of the Center for Whale Research, who helped track Humphrey after he returned to the Pacific.

Balcomb gave poor marks to the current rescue effort, arguing that aggressive steps should have been taken to turn the whales around as soon as they were spotted. And, he said, the effort should have different leaders at the helm.

The most qualified whale herders in the world, Balcomb said, are Japanese whale hunters whose traditional pipe-banging technique known as "oikomi" has been passed down for more than 700 years.

Instead, at least a dozen federal, state and local agencies have been involved in the whale operation since the pair appeared.

As the mother and calf tarried near the Rio Vista Bridge, their health deteriorated.

"The loss of any single animal would be bad. The loss of a breeding animal and her calf would be a substantial biological punch," said Brian Gorman, a NOAA spokesman. "To ignore the plight of such iconic animals as humpback whales in such a public place would be unthinkable."

Thnx for the updates, BBB.

BBB
Latest news: The two whales were given antibiotics by dart to help heal the gashes in their bodies.

Last report is they are about 45 miles from the Bay and exit to the Pacific and are still swimming strong in the right direction. The closer they get to the bay's salt water, the better for their health and the food they need.

BBB

Wayward Whales Now Just 10 Miles From Ocean
Wayward Whales Now Just Miles From Ocean
MARCUS WOHLSEN
May 29, 2007
VALLEJO, Calif.

Two lost whales closed in on their ocean home Tuesday evening, passing under a busy bridge and entering San Francisco Bay after being lost in inland waterways.

The mother humpback and her calf, who have sojourned for more than two weeks in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, passed under the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge on Tuesday afternoon, the next-to-last bridge along the pair's route.

"They're heading very much in the right direction," said Rod McInnis, a spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

If the humpbacks can navigate south around a peninsula and an island, few obstacles would remain on their route past Alcatraz to the Golden Gate, the strait that connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean.

Still, the fear remained that the whales might head south instead of west, passing under the Bay Bridge and into the long southern half of the bay.

"There are lots of places they could get themselves into trouble before they go out of the Golden Gate," McInnis said.

But, he said, the whales could be back out in the Pacific in a few hours from their current location "if they put their minds to it."

On Tuesday evening the whales were spotted swimming about 10 miles from the Golden Gate.

Observers saw the whales leap above the water Tuesday in a behavior known as breaching, which some biologists view as a form of communication and others as play.

A convoy of boats escorted the pair to protect them from heavy ship traffic in the bay. Bay Area ferry commuters could expect delays Wednesday morning depending on the whales' location, Coast Guard officials said.

The whale and her calf had been spotted in the river May 13 and got as far as 90 miles inland to the Port of Sacramento before turning around.

Lesions that had formed on the humpbacks' skin over the weekend appeared to be sloughing off, apparently due to the saltier water the pair have been swimming in since leaving Rio Vista, biologists said. Scientists also reported that a coating of algae that was clinging to the mother farther upriver had fallen away.

Antibiotics had been injected into the whales on Saturday to try to slow the damage from wounds likely caused earlier by a boat's keel.

The two whales spent Monday near the Benicia-Martinez Bridge, about 45 miles from the Pacific before finally swimming past it. Boats blocked the entrance to the Napa River and were to be positioned at the mouth of the Petaluma River near San Francisco Bay to keep them on track, Fees said.

With the whales on the move, officials did not plan to take any more action to prod them toward the Golden Gate Bridge.

Tokyo vows to continue cull of humpback whales
While we are trying to save these two whales, the Japanese government continues to kill them. Shame on them! ---BBB

Tokyo vows to continue cull of humpback whales
By David McNeill in Alaska
Published: 30 May 2007

Japan has vowed to press on and kill 50 humpback whales later this year in defiance of conservationists and anti-whaling nations.

Britain joined New Zealand, Australia and other "like-minded" nations to condemn the plan in Anchorage, Alaska, where the annual conference of the International Whaling Commission opened on Monday.

"This will really adversely affect the image of Japan in our countries, " said New Zealand's Environment minister, Chris Carter.

Japanese whaling ships intend to kill the humpbacks in the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary as part of its "scientific whaling" programme. The ships will also hunt hundreds of minke, sei, sperm and fin whales.

The humpback is classed by most environmentalists as one of the planet's more imperiled species, but not by Japan's Fisheries Agency. "We don't see it as endangered," said Joji Morishita, Tokyo's alternate IWC commissioner. "Our surveys suggest that in some areas humpback stocks are increasing."

Tokyo has hinted at a possible deal to limit the size of the humpback hunt in return for concessions on commercial whaling. Conservationists suspect that Japan might use the plan to kill one of the planet's more beloved mammals as a bargaining chip in its efforts to secure a return to small-scale commercial whaling by its coastal communities.

But the overture was rejected by Britain's Biodiversity minister, Barry Gardiner, who said that the humpack issue was not "a matter of horse trading and negotiations".

Conservationists say that scientific whaling is illegal and that the IWC should stop it, despite threats from the pro-whaling nations that blocking compromise will push them into a corner.

Officially, 29,000 whales have been slaughtered since a worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986, most by Japan, Norway and Iceland. Many more are snagged in fishing nets, something conservationists say causes 300,000 deaths a year. Others die from ingesting oil, chemicals and plastic in congested sea lanes.

The meat harvested is increasingly too polluted to eat. Iceland's commercial whaling campaign has been stalled ­ after mercury was found in whale carcasses.

"With so many other factors impacting whale populations, it is incredible that the IWC is still entertaining the idea of commercial whaling, " said Junichi Sato of Greenpeace Japan. He wants a commitment this year to switch the IWC into a "body that works for the whales and not the whalers".

Pro-whaling nations see the IWC in opposite terms, clinging to what they say is its original mission, the managed, sustainable use of whale resources. Japan has never accepted the conservationist takeover of the IWC and has waged a $750m (£380m) campaign to swing the organisation back to support commercial whaling. Last year, it won a narrow vote for the first time in 25 years, a symbolic victory that stunned environmentalists.

whales in bay
The whales are in San Francisco Bay. Now the task is to get them safely out through the Golden Gate without getting hit by lots of ship traffic.
If Humphrey could do it, I'm susre a mom and her babe can do it, too.

BBB

When whales get this screwed up, they should be harvested for use and science. Idiots poking them with antiobiotics and playing whale calls with no idea what they might mean.... unreal.

Emotion triumphs logic again and again. We are all doomed.

2 lost whales apparently find way back to ocean
2 lost whales apparently find way back to ocean
By MARCUS WOHLSEN
The Associated Press
5/31/07

SAN FRANCISCO -- More than two weeks after they were first spotted far up the Sacramento River, two lost humpback whales appeared to have finally found their way back to the ocean Wednesday.

The whales, believed to be a mother and calf, were last seen at sunset Tuesday less than 10 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge, after they traveled 25 miles southwest from another bridge. Officials said they assumed the pair returned to the open sea, undoing a wrong turn that had drawn thousands of onlookers and a flurry of rescue efforts.

To make sure the whales had not taken another wrong turn, two government boats were launched Wednesday morning to look for them in the Pacific Ocean, said Bernadette Fees, deputy director of the California Department of Fish and Game.

Rescuers planned to rely on reports from commercial vessels and Coast Guard patrols to determine if the humpbacks still were in the bay.

But as the afternoon wore on, officials grew increasingly confident that the humpbacks, which were injured by a boat's propeller during their two-week sojourn inland, had reached the ocean.

Marine scientists said Wednesday that although they will never know why the pair swam 90 miles inland, the massive operation to rescue them yielded valuable information about the endangered species.

It was the first time the same humpbacks were studied in the wild for so long, Fees said.

The information scientists gathered includes sound recordings, logs of the whales' behavior and tissue samples.

Speak Whale to Me
May 31, 2007
New York Times Op-Ed Contributor
Speak Whale to Me
By DAVID ROTHENBERG
Cold Spring, N.Y.

IT'S no surprise that the mother and calf humpback whales that wandered many miles up the Sacramento River, but that yesterday disappeared, presumably into the Pacific, did not respond as hoped to attempts to lure them downstream by playing recordings of whale noises. When it comes to sounds and songs, these animals behave in mysterious ways.

Consider the beautiful music that whales make, which became known to us 37 years ago when "Songs of the Humpback Whale" was released ?- and went on to become one of the best-selling nature recordings of all time. The whales' long, drawn-out melodies thunder on, loudly enough to be heard underwater for a distance of at least 10 miles. Five- to 20-minute songs ?- marked by repeating phrases, rhythm and even rhyme ?- are sung over and over for hours on end.

Because only the males sing, scientists long assumed that their songs were mating calls directed at females ?- like bird song in spring. But observation of humpback whale behavior has revealed that females actually pay no attention to the males' singing.

Other explanations have been proposed: that males sing to warn other males away, for example, or that the songs act as some kind of beacon to help migrating whales navigate.

The most recent theory on why whales sing comes from James Darling, a researcher who for many years has carefully observed the interactions of singing humpback whales near Maui, Hawaii. Mr. Darling has observed that males singing alone usually will join up with another male for a brief but almost always friendly, or at least conflict-free, interaction. And so he thinks it is likely that male whales sing to one another. During breeding, their songs somehow may help them to cooperate, and to recognize their closest male associates.

Whale song has another unexplained aspect that no bird song possesses. Across a single breeding ground, and in some cases across the reach of an ocean basin as large as the North Pacific, the whales all sing essentially the same tune. And as the season progresses, they collectively revise it, adding new melodies and taking others away. Over several mating seasons, songs are entirely changed. (Today's humpbacks would not recognize the music on "Songs of the Humpback Whale" from 1970.)

The whales evolve their common songs simultaneously even though some of them are much too far apart from one another to hear the changes at the same time.

How do they know what new notes to choose? What guides the changes they make? Scientists don't know, and hardly know how to find out.

Because the whales that were in the Sacramento River are females, whale songs probably would not have lured them downstream. So marine biologists tried playing feeding calls. This strategy worked 22 years ago when Humphrey, another humpback, was stuck in the same river. This time, it didn't work.

It's not easy to tell great whales what to do; it is even harder to figure out what drives them. But it is encouraging to see how many people have rallied round the cause of this stranded family.

There may be a reason whales have been drawn more than once to swim miles up this particular river. The more we observe them, the more we may learn.

David Rothenberg, a professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, is the author of "Why Birds Sing" and the forthcoming "Thousand Mile Song: Whale Music in a Sea of Sound."

I wonder how they know the strategy worked with Humphrey? Did they ask him?