Earlier this month I set out into the Santa Barbara Channel aboard the Condor Express for my first whale-watching trip this winter, and what a day it was!
This time of year, gray whales are passing through our Channel on their way to the shallow, warm lagoons of Baja California to give birth to their calves in a protected setting. As they pass our shores, they are in the midst of the longest migratory journey of any mammal, a round trip of 10,000 to 12,000 miles from the seas of the Arctic and Alaska to Baja and then back again.
The mothers, up to 45 feet long and about 45 tons, will lose more than a third of their weight during this epic six-month-long journey because they eat very little on the way. They must fatten up as best they can before beginning the journey south in December-January.
On the way south they are mostly well offshore, taking the shortest route to Baja by going either through the Santa Cruz Channel (between Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa islands) or along the north shore of Santa Cruz Island, and then through the Anacapa Island passage or past Point Hueneme.
On Jan. 16, we saw a row of spouts that looked like the fountains at the Las Vegas Bellagio Hotel going off. (Click here for more photos from Bob Perry with the Condor Express.) The wind blew the spouts together about 20 feet above the water and the combined mist made for a beautiful rainbow (on my list of Top 10 cool things to see!).
As they came closer, we could see more than 20 gray whales cavorting about, rolling and rubbing past each other, and tossing spectacular tail flukes in the air (this is called “fluking”) as they dove downward.
We were with them for more than an hour, and they were fluking over and over again with multiple flukes soaring upward at the same time!
We naturalists were speculating that this exuberant playfulness was mating behavior — perhaps a celebration that they were past the halfway point to Baja, or maybe there is just something special about these Santa Barbara waters … Gray whales do not mate for life, so this midchannel romp may be just one of several on the trip.
The recovery of eastern Pacific gray whales since the passage of the Marine Mammals Protection Act in 1972 has been one of the great success stories from our international protection efforts. They are almost back to their pre-whaling population now after coming close to extinction.
Not so in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, however, where protection came too late. There they are now considered to be extinct (although there has been one sighting off Africa and one off Israel, perhaps explorers from the healthy eastern Pacific population).
On their way back north, we will see many of the same gray whales again. The new mothers with calves, only 1 or 2 months old, tend to swim closer to our shores seeking protection from orcas. The shallow water and kelp beds offer some camouflage.
An active group of volunteers organize to count the northbound mothers and calves from a great view at Counter Point within the Coal Oil Point Reserve near UC Santa Barbara. They will start counting on Feb. 16 and will continue until sometime in May, or until all the mothers and calves are north of us. Click here for more information on the Gray Whales Count.
And then the cycle repeats late in the fall. Between now and then, the playful humpback whales will return to our waters (a few from last year never left) as will the monstrously huge blue whales, the largest animals on our planet — not just in the present day, but, as far as we know, the largest ever in all of Earth’s history.
And, of course, orcas (killer whales) can show up at almost any time. All in our own backyard!
— Ken Macdonald is an oceanographer and professor emeritus in UC Santa Barbara’s Department of Earth Science. He has been affiliated with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and has led deep-sea dives up to 15,000 feet in the submersible Alvin. He is a naturalist for Channel Islands National Park and the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.