Whales Get Lost
What do you do when two whales get lost and end up swimming up a river near a major city? Snap a whole lot of pictures, that’s what. Oh, and try to get them back out to sea.
he journey of a wayward whale and her calf back to the Pacific Ocean hit a snag Monday when the pair reversed course and began heading back up the Sacramento River.
The humpbacks, nicknamed Delta and Dawn, had traveled more than 20 miles south from the Port of Sacramento since taking a wrong turn and swimming toward the state capital more than a week ago. But they turned around again Monday afternoon, even as scientists and the Coast Guard tried to position more than a dozen boats in front of them.
"They’re at this point lost. We don’t think they have any clue," Rod McInnis of the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Their route includes sloughs leading to muddy deltas that could trap the whales, who appear to have been wounded by a boat’s propeller. Crews were trying to maneuver boats to the mouths of side channels to keep the whales from going off course.
The two also will have to make their way through the pylons of four bridges on their 90-mile trek. Once they reach San Francisco Bay, the whales will have to swim under the Golden Gate Bridge to return to the ocean, Wilson said.
The whales started moving toward the Pacific around 3:30 p.m. Sunday from the Port of Sacramento, where crowds gathered over the weekend to catch a glimpse. They swam as far as the Rio Vista Bridge in the rural Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta region before turning around.
source Tags: lost whales, sacramento river, delta, dawn, right whales, california
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