Whale-watching - includes related articles on whale's behavior and museum exhibits, festivals

Sunset, Jan, 1988

Whale-watching

There are sounds in the sea--joyous sounds. Chirping, squeaking, clicking, blowing, singing, splashing symphonies echo beneath the waves. These are the sounds of whales, and, at long last, they're getting louder. Indeed, this whale chorus is approaching levels not recorded since 19th-century whalers began chasing the leviathans to near extinction.

The comeback of the great whales in the eastern North Pacific is shaping up as a landmark environmental success story. And nowhere is the phenomenon more evident than just off our Western shores. While scientists debate actual numbers, the evidence is overwhelming: whales are being seen with increasing frequency from Alaska clear down the coast to Baja California --and in Hawaii. How many are now swimming in our waters? Enough to support rapid growth in a new whale-based industry: whale-watching.

This month, as another migration begins, tour companies are expecting a record number of watchers. Now through April is the longest season and most dependable time of year to see the California gray all along the West Coast, and the humpback in Hawaii.

Less well known is whale-watching's second season--summer. June through September, orcas, or killer whales, are in Puget Sound and Johnstone Strait; from July into November in recent years, blues and humpbacks have been seen regularly in deep water off San Francisco (see map on page 55).

"The West Coast is without doubt the best region in the world for people to see the great whales,' states Alan Baldridge of Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station, in Pacific Grove, California. "In no other place do so many different species come so close to populated shores at predictable times of the year.'

Are we loving them to distraction?

But this very accessibility has a growing number of experts worried. As the popularity of watching whales increases, so does concern over the effect that growing numbers of tour and private boats may be having on migrating grays near California and on breeding activities in Hawaii.

Last winter, we counted at least 24 companies in Southern California alone. At season's peak, these were running upward of a hundred boats, as many as four times a day; one outfit carried some 64,000 passengers over four months. And this doesn't take into account the numbers of pleasure craft conducting whale-watching trips of their own.

These numbers may be staggering, but most experts feel that commercial whale-watching isn't yet a problem in California. Ongoing research is revealing that minor shifts and changes from year to year in gray whale migration corridors are normal.

In fact, as Mark Palmer, of Oakland's Whale Center, points out, "Whale-watching has done more than anything else over the years to educate the public to the plight of whales. The more people know about whales and the oceans they live in, the better off our environment will be.'

"A bigger concern,' according to National Marine Fisheries Service biologist Jim Lecky, "is what's happening in Hawaii. Whales are being displaced from prime calving areas around Maui, and the main reason seems to be noise from generally increasing boat traffic. But the biggest problem is whale harassment by private boaters who don't understand--or who just ignore--federal guidelines.'

Those guidelines are simple: boats should not approach within 100 yards of whales in any waters (or within 300 yards of whales in designated Hawaiian calving waters), and boats should follow whales from behind and to the side at a constant speed not exceeding that of the slowest whale. Note that whales sometimes approach boats. For safety's sake, boats should never approach or come between a whale and its calf. Aircraft must not drop lower than 1,000 feet over whales.

Currently, violators can be cited, but the NMFS has incorporated its guidelines into laws that will give it even more clout in Hawaii's troubled waters this season.

Most experts feel that the least disruptive ways to see whales are from land or from a whale-watching tour boat that has a specially trained naturalist aboard. The listings on the opposite page offer suggestions for both.

Back from the brink of extinction

There is something stirring about seeing whales in the wild, something that has made whale protection one of the nation's most popular--and most emotional-- wildlife issues for more than a decade.

Maybe it's that, like us, whales are mammals: they breathe, they nurse their young, they have a body temperature of 98|. Maybe it's their colossal size: the blue whale is the largest animal that has ever inhabited our planet. Maybe it's their individuality: grays migrate some 10,000 miles, orcas live in tight family groups, male humpbacks "sing' variations of complex underwater arias.

Or maybe it's simply because man, who once hunted these magnificent creatures to the brink of extinction, is now successfully working to restore their numbers.

Although whaling has decreased dramatically since some 32,000 whales were killed in 1972-73, it was only last year that the International Whaling Commission was able to virtually ban commercial whaling. Now, the last whaling nations are only "studying' whales (in the name of research, Japan plans to kill at least 300 whales this season).