THE GRAY WHALE

10/14/09

The homeliest whale on earth will be passing by the Orange County coast soon in one of the longest migrations of any mammal on the planet: the California gray whale. Thousands of people will go whale watching this winter to see these whales. In fact commercial whale watching first began in southern California in the 1950’s to see the gray whale.

How do I know they are the homeliest? Well, as a year-round whale watching skipper I have seen many of the others, including the beautiful blue whales, fin whales, humpbacks, killer whales, minkes and more. It’s not that the gray whale itself is so bad looking. I mean the calves are pretty cute (I’ve even kissed one of them, not on the lips though). But gray whales pick up barnacles down in the lagoons in Baja where they are born, which only live on the grays, and it is not a very attractive accessory. Then there’s the whale lice that feed on the dead skin around the barnacles- forget about it!

Gray whales are not only the homeliest but they are also, usually, the most predictable. We normally see our first whale of the Whale Watching season the first week of December; plodding along at about one hundred and twenty degrees at four knots on their way down the coast to the lagoons of Baja where they mate and have their calves. The whale watching gets good mid-January when we start seeing them nearly every trip.  About mid-February we are seeing grays going up the coast as well as down – three hundred degrees and four knots on their way back to Alaska where they feed.

Gray whales spend the summer sucking mud off the bottom and filtering it through the baleen plates in their mouth. They gorge themselves on amphipods and worms for six months then live on their reserves for six months while they are migrating. This is a truly amazing feat when you consider the drain on the pregnant females who not only are carrying the calf inside them during the migration, but after birth that calf is growing at a rate of fifty pounds a day feeding on mother’s milk!  She fattens her calf up in the lagoons as long as possible. The mothers and calves are usually the last to leave the lagoons. We see mostly cow-calf pairs while whale watching in April off Orange County. Then these pairs have a five thousand mile trip ahead of them, all on an empty stomach.  The flow of whales is almost non-existent by the end of early May off the OC.

So far gray whales are the only whales to ever be taken off the endangered species list, because their numbers have returned to near pre-whaling days. According to Wayne Perryman, a NOAA Fisheries Service biologist and gray whale expert whose job it is to count these whales as they pass by the California coast, the gray whale population is now estimated somewhere between 19,000 and 23,000.   NOAA has set up two research stations for whale watching; one at Piedras Blancas Light station and one at Granite canyon (about seven miles south of Carmel) to monitor the grays. “The whales movements are so predictable”, Perryman recently told me, “that we have created a computer program to help us count whales as they pass by. When we spot a whale we enter its location on the computer and the program plots its likely speed and course like an air traffic controller so that when the whale resurfaces later, we don’t recount it.  Fielding research in the arctic is very expensive, but studying these whales here can give us an inexpensive way of learning the effects of climate changes in Alaska.”   The NOAA count has actually shown an increase in the number of calves following a year when the ice melts early. Perryman believes this is because the whales are able to feed longer and are more likely to carry their calves to full term. The migration was a little late arriving 2 years ago, and he believes this may have been a result of the whales feeding further north than usual because of the ice being less prevalent in Alaska than in previous years. I asked Perryman if he thought gray whales were attractive or homely.  The bright and highly opinionated researcher laughed and said, “No comment.”

I wanted to see what actual whale watchers thought, so I asked some of our passengers during our gray whale watching season why they came out to see these lice infested, barnacled, bottom feeding, leviathans.

“Because I’ve never seen one before”, Chris Stahl from Wisconsin said. Edith Dalleska from Minnesota said, “I’m not fussy, being from Minnesota, we want to see any whale”. When I asked how attractive the three whales they saw were to them, even insinuating a little by my question at the whale’s homeliness, everyone onboard agreed, (even the California residents), with Minnesota Edith’s assessment, “ They’re really lumpy but very beautiful.”

And it is true. There is something about these whales, an inner beauty, a strength, and  a heart  - and they do have great personalities. But it is more than personality. I remember watching a pair of gray whales last year, rolling around in courtship with a pod of bottlenose dolphins following them in the shimmering sunlight, I can’t help thinking how blessed I am to have this whale watching job, and how much I looked forward to seeing these homely giants again.

Capt. Dave