Propeller may have injured pair of wayward whales

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WEST SACRAMENTO, California (AP) -- Two humpback whales that made a 90-mile river journey from San Francisco to the outskirts of Sacramento have injuries that appear to have come from a propeller, marine experts said Wednesday.
Propeller may have injured pair of wayward whales - CNN.com

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I heard that yesterday that they were heading back to the sea. They were sending sonar signals from the ocean so the whales would know where to go.

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The whales are still in the Port of Sacramento. We live about 2 miles "as the crows fly", away from where they are. I was watching it this morning (Sunday) on the local news. They had about 20,000 people out there yesterday on the levee watching. For the last several days, you can see a couple of helicopters stationed over the area from the TV stations.

They first were sending the sounds from a Coast Guard boat, but they figured the propellers were making too much noise and they went to a smaller boat. THe whales started following, but after a while, moved back to where they had been.

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Nicknamed Delta and Dawn, the humpbacks started moving toward the Pacific at around 3:30 p.m. Sunday, swimming at about 6 mph toward Rio Vista, a town located about 45 miles from Sacramento. From Rio Vista it is another 60 miles to San Francisco Bay.

The whales traveled southwest from the Port of Sacramento, where crowds had gathered to catch a glimpse. As darkness fell Sunday, the Coast Guard escort that had followed the whales all day stopped trailing them so they would not accidentally get hit.

The whales' route includes sloughs leading to muddy deltas that could trap them. They appear to have been wounded by a ship's propeller. The pair will also have to make their way through the pylons of four bridges to reach the San Francisco Bay, and will have to swim under the Golden Gate Bridge to return to the ocean.

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I'm thinking when they come to the Bay, I going to try to get to the Golden Gate bridge and watch them go under the bridge and out to the ocean. So, I'm hoping its on a Saturday or a Sunday or in the evening.

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Regional: Update: Rescuers Lose Track Of Wayward Whales

Scientists tonight have lost track of two injured humpback whales that have spent nearly two weeks swimming in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, according to Joe Cordaro, a National Marine Fisheries Service biologist.

The two whales, a mother and her calf, were last seen heading north, away from the ocean, at 3:10 p.m., Cordaro said.

The pair spent the day swimming up and down Cache Slough north of Rio Vista, but were seen back in the main channel around 3 p.m. before they vanished, Cordaro said.

Scientists have tried a variety of different techniques to herd the distressed whales back to the ocean, including banging on pipes, playing killer whale sounds - the humpback's natural predator - and playing synthesized sounds that would be unfamiliar to the animals, but the whales did not respond.

On Friday, if the whales are found again, rescuers plan to bring in a Vallejo fire boat and use it to spray high-powered streams of water near the whales when they start heading in the wrong direction, Cordaro said.

If the hose method works, rescuers plan to begin trying to herd the whales again on Tuesday.

"There's no guarantee that this will work," Cordaro said.

Biologists observing the whales today didn't report any worsening of their condition, Cordaro said.

The whales, however, are thought to be in bad shape and it is believed that their prolonged stay in freshwater has hindered their ability to heal from their wounds, which may have resulted from contact with a boat's propeller shortly before they showed up in the delta.

Cordaro said that some scientists have theorized that the whales became disoriented after being struck by the ship, which is how they ended up in the delta. Other scientists have speculated that the pair headed up the river to find a safe place to heal from their injuries.

It is believed that before they were diverted, the two marine mammals were on their way to their feeding grounds in the northern pacific.

Although the whales can't eat anything in the delta - they mainly feed off of small saltwater fish such as krill, sardines and anchovies - the mother is believed to still be nursing her calf. Biologists believe that the mother could survive for about another month without eating, Cordaro said.

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From today's Sacramento Bee:

As Sacramento's humpback whales circled river waters near Rio Vista on Friday, scientists wrestled with the 40-ton question of how to lure a whale and her calf back to sea.

Helpful folks from around the world are drowning them with suggestions.

Capture the calf and use it as bait to draw its mom out of the Delta. Strew the river with orca dung. Zap the whales with electricity. Serenade them with the primal sound of an Australian didgeridoo.

Well, why not? These are uncharted waters for marine biologists. No one knows for sure what might prod the humpbacks back to their feeding grounds in the Pacific.

"This is almost an unprecedented situation," said Jim Darling, a marine biologist with the Whale Trust research foundation. He has been following the story of the Sacramento whales from his base in Vancouver, British Columbia. "There are a lot of firsts in this case -- they really are writing the book as they go."

On Friday, at last, one idea seemed to work: hosing the humpbacks.

With the whales still stalled about 70 miles from the ocean in Cache Slough near Rio Vista, rescuers used a fireboat to shoot a powerful stream of water 300 feet in front of the incorrigible pair. In five separate tests, the whales made a 90-degree turn away from the spray.

If the whales start heading upstream, the exercise taught researchers, the hose can be used to send them off in another direction.

Trevor Spradlin, a marine mammal biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the rescue crew was "very encouraged" about the fireboat technique.

Spradlin said the fire-hose test lasted about 45 minutes. "We kept it short because we don't want them to get used to it or lose the element of surprise."

The idea now is to let the whales, dubbed Delta and Dawn, rest over the long Memorial Day holiday weekend.

The rescue crew will come back Tuesday morning with more boats and more fire hoses. They plan to take advantage of a flood tide, which comes in at 10 a.m. and goes out at 4 p.m. Delta and Dawn moved last week from the Port of Sacramento downstream to Rio Vista on such a tide.

The fire boat experiment offered a glimmer of hope in what otherwise has been a sea of failures. Seducing the whales with recordings of sweet humpback songs did not work. Neither did scaring them with the cries of predator orcas. And banging on steel pipes left them unimpressed, if not annoyed.

So far, the only time they made a significant move downstream was when they were left alone.

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Earlier today I heard on the radio that the whales are spending the day up a slough. Not what the scientists intended.

It's good to have puzzles that challenge us.

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They Wales need to get back to the salt water before there health deteriorates.

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Stranded whales given antibiotic treatment

RIO VISTA, Calif., May 27 (UPI) -- Animal experts in California have injected antibiotics into a pair of injured and disoriented whales in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
While the exact cause of the animals' injuries has not been confirmed, experts decided to give the humpback whales an antibiotic injection to stop their wounds from worsening in the delta's fresh water, the San Francisco Chronicle said Sunday.

Saturday's medical treatment of the whales marked the first time that such animals have received antibiotics while still in the wild.

Numerous attempts have been made to lure the mammals back into San Francisco Bay, but without success thus far.

On Friday, local authorities met with limited success leading the animals by spraying them with water and intend to use that technique again after the holiday weekend.

The Chronicle said the whales have fallen into the pattern of swimming in circles inside of the delta, but never going under the Rio Vista Bridge.

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Whales Quickly Approaching San Francisco Bay

Monday morning......

A day after two injured whales lost on a river made encouraging progress in returning to the ocean, rescue officials were concerned about the large commercial ships the whales could encounter as they got closer to San Francisco Bay.

A mother humpback whale and her calf have made it down the Sacramento River as far as the Benicia Bridge.

The U.S. Coast Guard boats guarding the whales as they swim downriver have so far had to deal only with recreational boats and windsurfers as obstacles. Now, as the whales get closer to the bay, they will encounter large oceangoing vessels that could harm them.

Scientists have no clear idea why the whales began moving again after frustrating biologists' efforts to urge them seaward using a variety of tactics, Renick said.

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Scientists have no clear idea why the whales began moving again after frustrating biologists' efforts to urge them seaward using a variety of tactics.

..duh..

Scientists have no clear idea...

• why the whales began moving again
• why their efforts to urge them seaward failed
• why the whales came here at all
• why the whales 'vacationed' in this area for all these days
• which sounds the whales would enjoy or flee from (they tried killer whales, feeding whales, and others. none worked as hoped by the scientists.)
• when the next whales will appear here again

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May 28, 8:05 PM (ET)

BENICIA, Calif. (AP) - Two whales lost in the Sacramento River encouraged biologists Monday by making progress toward their ocean home, but then abruptly halted their journey at a busy bridge.

Unlike the relatively narrow section of the river where the two had lingered for the past week, the whales were in a holding pattern in a much wider waterway teeming with traffic.

"Right now they are meandering, but we're hoping that they get it in their minds to keep going," said Rod McInnis, a spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The shift came after an encouraging spurt in which the pair traveled about 24 miles in 24 hours. They were first spotted May 13 and got as far as 90 miles inland to the Port of Sacramento before turning around.

The mother humpback whale and her calf were seen Monday morning near the Benicia-Martinez Bridge, about 45 miles from the Pacific, said Carol Singleton of the Governor's Office of Emergency Services.

Sightseers swarmed the waterfront near the bridge to catch a glimpse as the U.S. Coast Guard tried to maintain a 500-yard safety zone around the whales. About 100 boats surrounded the pair, and Coast Guard crews hauled several swimmers out of the water as they tried to approach the whales, Lt. Larry Curran said.

Biologists hope that getting the whales into more brackish water after more than two weeks in the river could help ease the physical strain they have suffered from long exposure to fresh water.

Scientists were particularly concerned about lesions that have appeared on the humpbacks' skin over the weekend, and they were awaiting test results from skin samples to determine the cause.

The humpbacks' long exposure to fresh water has led to serious skin damage, making them vulnerable to germs they would not face in their native saltwater habitat.

Despite the pair's health problems, officials did not plan to take any action to prod them toward the Golden Gate Bridge. They also said they could not predict whether the whales would move again.

"It's still anybody's guess. The whales are going to decide what they're going to do and how they're going to do it," said Bernadette Fees, deputy director of the California Department of Fish and Game.

Scientists acknowledged they had little idea why the whales started moving again around 2 p.m. Sunday, which was around the same time of their equally mysterious departure from the port exactly a week earlier. (italics to show that this goes with my above post)

Both whales have gashes - likely suffered from a run-in with a boat's keel - that have also worsened during their river stay. But veterinarians believe antibiotics injected into the whales Saturday could slow the damage, and scientist were ready to administer a second dose.

The calf also appears to be more active, which is an encouraging sign, they said.

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Delta and Dawn pick up steam in Bay
By Dorothy Korber - Sacto Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:01 pm PDT Tuesday, May 29, 2007

By 1 p.m. Tuesday, the wayward humpback whales Delta and Dawn were deep into San Pablo Bay, about six miles west of the Carquinez Bridge on their seaward trek.

The mother and calf have gone beyond the Napa River, avoiding a wrong turn there. They seem to be moving west at a steady clip.

"Everybody's really excited that hopefully these animals are heading out. Everybody's got their fingers crossed," said Jim Oswald, spokesman for the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito.

The whales are moving on their own without any human assistance. The flotilla of vessels tracking them are there primarily to monitor their health and keep them from harm's way from ships and boats in these busy channels.

On Monday, authorities fished out at least two people who jumped into the water to attempt to swim with the whales, and issued verbal warnings to nearly two dozen others on piers and in kayaks. The whale team continues to ask boaters, kayakers and others to respect the 500-yard safety zone around the humpbacks.

Before reaching the Pacific, the whales have two more bridges to navigate: the Richmond/San Rafael and the Golden Gate.

But the Carquinez Bridge seemed to pose no obstacle to the pair. After some hesitation, they swam beneath its spans while a freight train rumbled by, blowing its horn. There was also a plane overhead and vehicular traffic on the bridge -- plus a gallery of onlookers.

Earlier this morning, there were euphoric shouts from spectators as the calf breeched from the water in a silvery spray - behavior typical of healthy whale young.

Researchers think the antibiotics administered over the weekend are taking effect -- their skin condition is improving with some of the lesions sloughing off.

This 20-day saga has been a virtual treasure trove for researchers seeking to understand whale psychology and physical health. They have been taking still photos, video, and studying the whales' every move from tail lobbing to breeching -including their sometimes seemingly erratic behavior.

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... a virtual treasure trove for researchers seeking to understand whale psychology and physical health.

I think they're planning to teach the whales the Vulcan mind meld so they can really understand whale psychology.