Gray whale births rebounding (in warming environment) on Pacific Coast

[DeepModem Mom]

CNN/AP: Gray whale births rebounding on Pacific Coast
Thursday, June 29, 2006


There are 18,000 gray whales in the Eastern Pacific stock, the NOAA reports on its Web site.

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- The number of gray whales born along the Pacific Coast has rebounded from record low levels, suggesting that pregnant females are thriving despite a warming Arctic feeding environment, federal biologists said.

The number of calves that passed Point Piedras Blancas near San Luis Obispo jumped from 945 last year to 1,018 calves in 2006, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. Fewer than 300 of the 3-month-olds were spotted in 2000 and 2001.

The whales have traditionally migrated to summer feeding grounds in the northern Bering Sea, but have been forced farther north in recent years because warming air and water has reduced the population of its favored prey, the fatty amphipod....

***

But the whales appear to have taken advantage of melted polar sea ice, discovering new routes to food and finding enough crustaceans in the mud to nourish pregnant females, scientists said.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/06/29/whale.boom.ap/index.html

[zonkers]

1. So all you "global warming" haters just clam up.

[tfj2]

7. yeah.. don't wanna hear no more bitchin' @ f-in' global warming...

[lastknowngood]

2. OH good so the Japanese will have more whale meat.

n/t

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. And the Makah.

[BrotherBuzz]

4. Grey whales hug the shoreline...

well inside of international waters.

The great migration.

Gray whales do not stay long in their southern breeding grounds. By mid February newly pregnant females, adult males, and juveniles begin the swim northward. Six weeks later, cows and their calves follow.

The whales hug the coastline as they swim, and are sometimes only a few hundred meters (or less) from shore. They may navigate by recognizing familiar coastal landmarks and following seafloor contours. Moving in small groups, grays cover about 60 to 80 km a day, a slower pace than the urgent southern migration some months before.
Some whales feed as they approach the coast of Vancouver Island. The majority of these gray whales will eventually reach their summer feeding grounds in the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean, where they will gorge mainly on small crustaceans that burrow in the seafloor mud. By then it will be June, the peak of Arctic summer.

After months of feeding, October signals the onset of winter. It is time for the pregnant females to lead the return migration southward. Again the route hugs the continent. The majority pass Pacific Rim's Long Beach Unit in late December and arrive in the breeding lagoons a few weeks later. Here, after an 8,000 km non-stop swim from the Arctic, the cycle of birth and mating is repeated.

[Nihil]

18. That's even more good news!

Finally, something that will stop the Japanese murderers
from killing off this species at least.

[Judi Lynn]

22. Never have heard this about gray whales. Thank you. n/t

[BrotherBuzz]

23. California Grey whales are popular to watch from shore

I had a ritual pilgrimage to Point Reyes every year on New Year's Day to view my friends. It was a tradition started back in the sixties before it became popular. From the point, you actually looked down to see them. It was so cool being there with a few friends alone on the bluff and communing with nature. On a good year in the sixties we were happy to see six whales the whole day, but by the nineties we could expect to see a dozen at any one time - maybe thirty in two hour period. Amazing watching, just amazing and humbling.

Sadly, I stopped doing it when the fad caught on and tons of people started showing up. It got so bad, the rangers started managing traffic and running a shuttle from a distant parking lot to the bluff. Cripes, that was the last time I went because I refuse to take a number and wait to commune with my God.

[Judi Lynn]

24. Oh, my gosh! I never heard of Point Reyes, so I looked for a photo!

Found a good view in google images under Point Reyes whales. It's simply breathtaking. I can see why you'd prefer to go there only alone or with a small group.





http://www.naturalbornhikers.com/Seashores/Seashores.htm

You've given DU'ers a name to remember should we ever find ourselves in that part of the world. It's unbelievably beautiful. Hope it can stay that way. (Maybe there's room to squeeze in a Walmart store up there!)

[BrotherBuzz]

25. It's a magic area alright, but there's more - a bonus!

If one gets tired of whale watching they can walk a mere hundred yards southeast and view the elephant seal rookery. The elephant seals were completely extinct in this area when I first started visiting, but they have come back in spades (along with their enemy the white shark).

Elephant Seal Colonization of Point Reyes

While exploring the Pacific coast in the 1800s, a British whale and seal hunter named Charles Scammon saw northern elephant seals from Baja, Mexico, to Point Reyes, California. Elephant seals currently range from Mexico to Alaska and spend 80 percent of their life in the open sea. Sharing the fate of many of the oceans' great whales, they were hunted to the brink of extinction for their oil-rich blubber. One bull elephant seal would yield nearly 25 gallons of oil. Though we don't know exactly how many northern elephant seals were alive before the 20th Century, it has been estimated that fewer than 1,000 northern elephant seals existed by 1910. In 1922, the Mexican government banned hunting, followed shortly thereafter by the United States government. Since then, the population of northern elephant seals has recovered at an average rate of six percent per year. Today, thanks to government protection and the seals' distant lives at sea, the worldwide population has grown to an estimated 150,000 seals.

After being absent for more than 150 years, elephant seals returned to the sandy Point Reyes Headlands in the early 1970s. In 1981, the first breeding pair was discovered near Chimney Rock. Since then, researchers have found that the colony is growing at a dramatic annual average rate of 16 percent. When severe storms occurred in 1992, 1994, and 1998, many pups were killed. During the El Niño winter of 1998, storms and high tides washed away approximately 85% of the 350 young pups before they had learned to swim. Nevertheless, the Point Reyes elephant seal population is between 1,500 and 2,000. Fanning out from their initial secluded spot, the seals have expanded to popular beaches, causing concern for both their safety and that of their human visitors.

http://www.nps.gov/pore/nature_wldlf_eseals.htm

[tfj2]

6. i know...just lost my meger buzzzzz....

[tfj2]

5. ever listen to live humpback songs?..i use the jupiter fd. in hawaii

[Kagemusha]

8. What the hell is with this massive outpouring of negativity here?...

Christ, I don't get it, gray whales rebounding, isn't that a good thing? Isn't it?...

I do not get it at all.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

9. It is a good thing. I like gray whales.

I like the Makah too.

:P

[DeepModem Mom]

10. I think it's wonderful -- but worry that it's a temporary reprieve...

if these great creatures must continue to find new ways of surviving. They clearly are intelligent, however. God bless them.

[Kagemusha]

11. That's good, I was fearing the lack of bad news was driving people mad

I mean, if the world's not full bore heading to apocalyptic destruction there's going to be some really disappointed people. Me, I'll take good news when I can get it.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. Well, the whole global warming thing is pretty bad news.

Sure, more gray whales is good, but that's going to leave less krill for the blue whales. And the fish that orcas eat. So eventually the orcas are going to starve or be forced, ironically, to eat gray whales.

[The Stranger]

15. Sort of like those who wanted to address bears invading suburbs by

sending out the rednecks into the woods with shotguns.

"Too many a 'dem bears? See, I told ya there ain't nuttin' wrong!"

[Kagemusha]

17. Uh what you're describing is what I would generally call "nature".

It's been going on for a lot longer than humans and global warming... and signs of its continuance are good.

I mean, if people REALLY were serious about cutting out competition for other types of whales they'd probably support expanded Japanese Minke whale hunting. Or seals. So I just decided people aren't really serious about that kind of thing. So I'll just be happy that not all of nature uniformly destructs at the slightest rise in temperature.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

20. No, it's very unnatural.

There's nothing natural about global warming.

[Kagemusha]

21. I was replying to 'less krill for other whales, orcas eat gray whales'

That, to me, is nature. Nature reshuffles the deck chairs on the Titanic ALL THE TIME... and most of the time, even if one ship sinks, there's others still at sea. That's how nature works.

This is hardly an argument that global warming is good. I said nothing of the sort. But near condemnation of the increase in the numbers of one species of whales seems laughably wrong to me, personally.

[The Stranger]

14. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I'm sure that was a good thing too.

[The Stranger]

13. Is the fucking Navy now going to test some sonar and kill a few hundred?

Or is the criminal maladministration going to tout this as reason to drill somewhere, make something go extinct, blow something up, or poison some very large area and group of living things?

Color me skeptical.

[Judi Lynn]

16. The report comes out right on the heels of reports of the Navy

using sonar at a level which kills them off in a particularly painful way. There was a report just yesterday. First thing I thought of when I saw this article.

You learn to recognize their patterns, don't you? Jeez.

[The Stranger]

19. The most horrifying thing of all is that it just doesn't surprise me.