Lost whales may now be in open sea

0 Comments | USA TODAY, May, 2007 | 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...