Blue Whales are the largest creatures on earth, and have decided to come stay on the San Diego Coast. The whales are usually along the coast from mid June to October. This has helped businesses and tourism in San Diego as it is a longer season for whale watching.
Well after the traditional
gray-whale-watching season that has become a staple of San Diego
tourism, Capt. Kenny Manzoni last week ferried visitors from Texas
offshore in search of a much bigger prize.
Blue
whales — the largest creatures on Earth — have taken to lolling in
coastal waters so reliably in recent years that some companies have
extended their outings nearly year-round to take advantage of their
allure. Their regular presence from mid-June into October is tied to
larger cycles of oceanography, and it has injected money into local
ventures and complemented other local draws, such as SeaWorld.
“To be out on the water with an
animal of that size … is just a remarkable thing,” said Manzoni, who
owns Adventure Rib Rides at Harbor Island. “It has become a wonderful
phenomenon here in the summer months.”
For
many people, the repeated appearance of blues offers the chance of a
lifetime — an opportunity to see the biggest animal ever known and one
that remains endangered worldwide. Blue whales famously grow longer than
100 feet, with the biggest ones typically found in the Antarctic.
Locally, they are closer to 85 feet — more than three times longer than
Manzoni’s rigid inflatable boat and about twice as long as the legions
of grays that migrate through the region.
Manzoni
started his tours in 2005 and has seen a steady increase in blues
virtually every year so that today he figures 50 reside offshore at any
one time during summer months. He often finds the whales gathering at
Nine Mile Bank off Point Loma, near where the coastal shelf drops off to
the deep ocean.
They graze so methodically that boat captains often
follow a group of them day after day.
“We
are getting whale-watching right now like we have never had before,”
said Capt. Scott McDaniels on Sea Adventure 80 at H&M Landing in San
Diego.
“We
are currently in a cooler water cycle,” said Capt. Frank Ursitti on
Ranger 85 at H&M Landing. “As a result of deep-water upwellings,
these cooler water temps are nutrient-rich and set the stage for massive
plankton blooms, which in turn provide ideal conditions for krill to
flourish in the region.”
Bruce Mate, director of the
Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University, also links the
phenomenon to food, for which blues can swim 140 miles a day. Eastern
Pacific blues winter in the waters off Mexico and points south, then
forage their way north.
“In
recent years, there have been a lot of blue whales at the Coronados due
to an abundance of krill, which they do not pass up,” Mate said. “One
good El Niño — when the upwellings that produce krill fail — and blue
whales in good body condition will be hard to find as they extend their
ranges trying to find high concentrations of food.”
McDaniels
typically sees three or four blues munching on krill, but on magical
days there might be two dozen blues and fin whales gorging themselves
when the ocean turns orange with the shrimplike creatures. Sometimes he
can idle for 20 minutes or more until “the whales will start acting like
dolphins; they roll over on their sides then look up at you.”
Said Ursitti: “Sometimes the whales themselves are as curious with us as we are with them,”
The
current population size of blue whales in the eastern Pacific Ocean is
unknown because budget constraints at the National Marine Fisheries
Service mean the agency hasn’t done a ship-based survey since 2008 and
it’s not clear when the next one will be. Jay Barlow, a biologist at the
fisheries service in La Jolla, said he noticed blues sticking around
through the summer starting about five years ago, as they would “fill up
their tanks.”
He said 2,000
or 3,000 transit the California coast each year, making it one of the
largest concentrations of the species on the planet. Those numbers are
still far below what they were in pre-whaling days (commercial whaling
for blues was banned internationally in 1966), but local blues aren’t as
hard-hit as they are in other parts of the globe. In the southern
hemisphere, scientists figured the pre-exploitation counts were as high
as 200,000 and in recent years the numbers have been pegged at about
1,400.
Today, the biggest
threats known to blues include being hit by ships, the subject of much
research and concern in California. They also may be snagged in
commercial fishing gear.
Blue
whales give away their location by spouting a column of water 30 feet
into the air. The spray is visible from miles away and is
distinguishable from other whales because the water is expelled in a
tighter column than that of humpbacks and other species. Manzoni said
the June gloom actually makes it easier to see whales because the water
is typically calm enough so that white caps don’t mask the spouts.
The
National Marine Fisheries Service asks boaters to stay 100 yards from
marine mammals and avoid getting in between whale mothers and their
calves. Otherwise, the agency encourages excursions in search of blues —
as long as they linger. The U.S. Climate Prediction Center has issued
an El Niño watch, saying there’s a 50 percent chance one will develop
this year, and that could ultimately alter local blue whale abundance.
“We
can’t really predict where they will be next year,” said Barlow at the
fisheries service. “Take advantage while they are here. Go out and take a
look.”
“With
the money raised, we fund research, we fund our own clinic and we send
about 80 kids to MDA summer camp every summer,” said Angel Chanchea,
executive director of the local MDA.
