Lost Whales May Now Be in Open Sea

By John Ritter

SAN FRANCISCO — Rescuers have lost the two lost whales.

Search boats and helicopters scoured San Francisco Bay and open ocean outside it on Wednesday but saw no sign of the mother humpback and her calf. The pair had been spotted less than 10 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge late Tuesday near Tiburon, Calif.

The whales might have slipped beneath the bridge under cover of darkness and returned to familiar waters of the Pacific Ocean after milling around in an inland river delta for more than two weeks.

The humpbacks, members of an endangered species that migrates annually between Mexico, Costa Rica and California’s coast, presumably are feeding and healing after a risky sojourn that mobilized resources of at least five government agencies, created a local frenzy and captured global attention.

Reason for run unknown

Why, after so many days in waters as far as 90 miles from the coast, did the whales suddenly decide to make virtually a bee-line run back to salt water?

"Really hard to say," says Doreen Gurrola, assistant education director at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, Calif. "Could be they recognized their route and realized the ocean was nearby. They could have sensed something — sounds, a chemical change, strong currents — that made them know they were closer."

They may have detected saltier water as they moved farther south in the bay, away from the mouth of the Sacramento River, Gurrola says, though it’s not known whether whales have that ability.

Or they may have heard their buddies. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) vessel spotted humpback and blue whales Wednesday feeding on krill, a tiny shrimplike invertebrate, near the Farallon Islands west of San Francisco.

Researchers will analyze recordings of sounds from those whales to try to learn whether the lost whales could have heard them and followed them out of the bay, says Trevor Spradlin, a NOAA marine mammal biologist.

"We know whales communicate and we know sounds travel, particularly low-frequency sounds," he says.

The boat saw "whales of all ages out there having a feast," NOAA spokesperson Mary Jane Schramm says

As of Wednesday night, the agencies were preparing to shut down the rescue effort, says Jim Oswald, a spokesman for the mammal center. Had the lost pair been spotted in the bay, officials were ready to reroute commuter ferries to keep clear of them.

Human efforts to lure the animals back to their Pacific comfort zone — recorded sounds of humpback and killer whales, herding by boats, fire hoses — seemed to have little effect. "They moved on their own accord. They weren’t reacting to our stimuli," Gurrola says.

After swimming around near the Port of Sacramento for days, drawing crowds of residents to riverbanks to see them, the whales headed toward the bay last week. At first, they seemed to be confused by bridges encountered along the way and at one point turned back upriver.

By last weekend, they were on the move again, though they hesitated and retreated from the Benicia-Martinez bridge humming with holiday traffic. They finally entered the bay Tuesday. Marine biologists said their injuries would heal faster now that they were in salt water.

Worrisome wounds

An encounter with a boat’s keel is thought to have caused a 2-foot-long gash and a deep scrape on the mother and a flank wound on the calf. Each got a dose of antibiotics Saturday administered with a gun firing a foot-long syringe.

California’s lieutenant governor dubbed the mother whale Delta and her calf Dawn, though the juvenile’s gender isn’t known. The last time a whale swam inland was in 1990, when the famous Humphrey made a return visit after appearing first in 1986 and staying 26 days.

Rescuers weren’t worried that the whales would starve. Humpbacks don’t start feeding along the coast until early May, on a diet of mostly schooling fish such as sardines and anchovies. These whales appeared to have plenty of fat, Gurrola says.

"They weren’t looking emaciated. They still had that roundness, that girth," she says. "It’s when you can see the outline of their backbone that you’re really concerned."

The whales could have missed the right turn into the Golden Gate, instead swam under the Bay Bridge and kept going south along the east side of San Francisco almost as far as San Jose. That could have extended the daily whale rescue flotilla indefinitely.

As it was, as many as 12 boats with more than 40 aboard hovered near the animals, keeping pleasure boats at least 500 yards away and trying to coax the animals to the sea. California’s Fish and Game Department, the Coast Guard, NOAA, the Vallejo fire department and the Solano County sheriff lent vessels. California Highway Patrol helicopters helped pinpoint the whales each morning.

"It’s hard to say how much this cost," says Coast Guard Petty Officer Jon Cilley. "No one has sat down to figure it out." (c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.