Tracy Press

A pair of whales made their way past the Golden Gate on Tuesday after spending days wandering the Sacramento River. By AP

The Reporter, Joel Rosenbaum/AP - One of the two wayward humpback whales swims under the Carquinez Bridge in Crockett on Tuesday. After spending more than two weeks in the fresh water of the Sacramento Delta, the mother humpback whale and her calf made significant progress toward the Pacific Ocean.

BERKELEY — Two lost whales were closing in on their ocean home Tuesday evening, coming within 10 miles of the Golden Gate as they passed under a busy bridge and entered San Francisco Bay.

The mother humpback and her calf, who have sojourned for more than two weeks in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, were spotted swimming off Marin County’s Tiburon Peninsula as fog rolled in across the bay.

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

The whales passed under the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge on Tuesday afternoon, the last bridge along the pair’s route before reaching the Golden Gate. If the humpbacks can navigate south around the peninsula and a nearby island, few obstacles would remain on their route past Alcatraz to the Pacific Ocean.

Still, the fear remained that the whales might continue south instead of west, passing under the Bay Bridge 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.

The duo was first spotted May 13 and got as far as 90 miles inland to the Port of Sacramento before turning around.

Crowds have gathered wherever the whales have passed and have seldom been disappointed. Patient 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 pure play.

Ariadne Green, 57, of Vallejo, came to the waterfront to catch a glimpse Tuesday after traveling last week to Rio Vista, where the whales circled for a week before heading ocean-ward. She described the humpbacks’ inland visit as a “profound spiritual experience” but was equally grateful for their departure.

“They need to go home now because their health is in jeopardy,” Green said. “It’s good to know they’re on their way back.”

Over the Memorial Day weekend, the U.S. Coast Guard had to haul several swimmers out of the water as they tried to approach the whales and fend off about 100 boats carrying would-be whale watchers.

Rescuers said they have received an avalanche of e-mails and calls to hotlines set up to take suggestions and answer questions from the public tracking the whales’ progress.

Internet forums and blogs brim with whale chatter, from complaints the pair are distracting the country from more important issues to prayers for their safe return to sea. Online photo and video sites carry footage captured by bystanders who have tracked the whales’ every move.

Biologists said the saltier water where the mother humpback whale and her calf have been swimming since leaving Rio Vista has helped reverse some of the health problems caused by long exposure to fresh water.

Lesions that had formed on the humpbacks’ skin over the weekend appeared to be sloughing off, California Department of Fish and Game deputy director Bernadette Fees said. Scientists also reported that a coating of algae that was clinging to the mother farther upriver had fallen away.

Veterinarians did not get a good glimpse Monday of wounds that had been suffered by both whales and could not say whether those had started to heal, Fees said. Antibiotics were injected into the whales Saturday to try to slow the damage from the gashes, likely from a boat’s keel or propeller.

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

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

Rescue boats blocked the entrances to the Napa River and the Petaluma River north of San Francisco Bay, and the whales passed up both potential detours, rescuers said.

“It’s all up to the whales at the end of the day,” said Jim Oswald, spokesman for the Marine Mammal Center, a nonprofit wildlife group helping to coordinate the rescue.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (1)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

...
written by just a reader , May 30, 2007

bless them!!