Meanwhile, in California... [updated!]
Posted by Page (in Amsterdam)
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All in all, it's not a natural - or healthy - place for humpback whales. However, a mother humpback whale and her baby have manage to swim up the 90 mile long channel and into the port area. They have been in the port since about May 16, 2007. Biologists are trying to figure out how to get the whales out, for obvious reasons, not the least of which is:
The 14m female has a long and deep wound on her back in front of her dorsal fin that appeared to have occurred when she surfaced underneath a boat, said Frances Gulland, the Sausalito-based Marine Mammal Centre veterinarian who inspected the animals.The whale's 7m calf had a more severe wound on its right flank that may have been inflicted when the animal surfaced alongside its mother.
"The calf's wound could have a long-term impact on that animal," said Ms Gulland.
[Note: more current articles specify that a boat propeller probably caused the wounds.]
Biologists are trying to use recorded whale songs to lure the whales back to the ocean. You can see from this map that it's not an easy or short journey.
Here's more. Basically, the whale song strategy didn't work; the whales started to leave the port twice but turned around each time. The biologists point out that although this strategy has worked before, the current case is more complicated because it's a mother with her baby, and that both are wounded.
For obvious reasons, it is very, very important that the whales get back into their natural environment, both because they need more food, and because their wounds will heal much more rapidly there.
The next thing the whale-rescuing crews will try is herding the pair down the channel with boats. It's a "learn-as-they-go" situation for the biologists, and getting the whales back to where they belong could take weeks.
Just like with the case of the "Brooklyn whale", the whales are getting a lot of attention. As urgent and sad as the situation is, at least people get a chance to learn about whales, right up close. They get to learn about the dangers that whales face beyond the harpoon, which is something not a lot of people think about.
And, unfortunately, harpoons are only part of the big picture of all the threats whales face from humans. We can't forget that.
UPDATE!
The whales are "on the move", according to the Los Angeles Times:
A mother-and-child pair of wounded humpback whales stranded in the Sacramento River Delta were headed toward the ocean late Sunday after roaming for a week in brackish inland waterways.U.S. Coast Guard officials said the whales were swimming southwest in a deep water channel about 20 miles southwest of the Port of Sacramento by 9 p.m.
Coast Guard officials said the humpbacks appeared to right their course on their own.
They still have a number of obstacles (the article says "...bridge pylons and sloughs leading to muddy deltas..."), so stay tuned, and I'll try to keep you updated.
Comments
I read that they are using recordings of Alaskan humpbacks feeding to try and lure them out. But given the fact that we know humpies speak different dialects, and given we have no idea what the recorded whales were actually communicating, it seems on par with trying to coach someone through a maze by playing randomly sampled audio tracks from foreign language tapes.
This was the same spot where Humphrey the Humpback got stuck a few years back.
Posted by: Brianfit | May 21, 2007 6:19 AM
Hi brianfit,
I didn't realize those were the recordings they were using!
That sounds like my first year in Amsterdam!
But seriously, it's a very good analogy. I'm surprised that the marine biologists involved didn't think of that... very surprised, in fact.
I just updated the post with the latest news. Apparently, the whales are "on the move". Let's keep our fingers crossed... I'm worried about them.
Posted by: Page | May 21, 2007 10:21 AM