Gentle giants put on their show of might

On a chilly Sunday morning, with a fierce northwesterly wind raking broad white streaks across the ocean, the only clear sign of animal life is in the sky.

Two peregrine falcons beat their way headlong into the wind, briefly, before veering to their right and riding it swiftly out of sight.

A red-tail hawk emerges from beneath the cliff like a harrier jet, and holds position for a moment before also turning and dashing away.

The spotters follow the birds with binoculars, then turn their attention back to the water, one of them explaining, “When you don’t have whales, you make do.”

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But the California gray whales are coming. Another season is here and slowly, surely, sightings will pick up.

Their 10,000-mile journey, from the Bering Sea and beyond to Baja California and back, is as predictable as the tides. It’s one of the longest mammal migrations and it’s certainly the most scrutinized.

Nowhere is that scrutiny more evident than at the Point Vicente Interpretive Center, where volunteers for the Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project work throughout the 4 1/2 -month season, noting all marine mammal sightings.

“To me it’s a feeling, like, ‘Everything’s OK in the world if the whales keep returning,’ ” Libby Helms, a retired teacher from Palos Verdes, says from her perch on the patio. “It’s a real comforting thing, and I just adore them.”

For more than 25 years, these volunteers, under the direction of the American Cetacean Society’s L.A. Chapter, have manned posts on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

The information they have gathered has helped scientists learn more about whale habits and unearth trends.

Combining this information with their own, National Marine Fisheries Service biologists have determined, for example, that it takes an average of 54 days for a whale to swim 4,971 miles from the north-central Bering Sea to Baja California. It travels at a rate of 3.8 mph and covers 91.3 miles a day.

More interesting, perhaps because of climatic changes, the whale migration now starts a week later than it did before 1980, and nearly half of whale births now occur north of Carmel, much farther north than before.

Dedication? Joan Venette, a retired Torrance nurse, has put in 16,000 hours over 21 seasons. Jud Goodspeed has logged 8,600 hours and Joyce Daniels has contributed 7,000 hours and now is at the station each afternoon, seven days a week.

Hugh and Pam Ryono, Clyde Lambert, Karin Campbell, Robin Riggs and others have been part of the program for 15-plus years.

“These people have seen more whales than anybody else in their lifetime,” says Alisa Schulman-Janiger, project director.

They’ve witnessed grays and other whales breaching clear of the water. They’ve seen whales and pinnipeds hiding from orcas. They’ve watched gray whales interact with sea lions and other mammals.

Helms recalls watching a doting gray whale mom glide by with a newborn on her fluke:

“The baby kept sliding off and swimming back the other way, and pretty soon the mom would realize it was not on her tail anymore, and go back around, slide underneath the baby and pick it up again.”

Volunteers watched tearfully, in the early days, as newborn whales dived into gill-nets and drowned. In fact, volunteers’ input supported a legislated ban on near-shore gill-nets in the early 1990s.

They cheered triumphantly the time a lifeguard freed a juvenile whale that had become hopelessly entangled in the line connecting a lobster trap to its buoy.

ACS-LA project volunteers helped monitor the condition of gray whales during the migrations of 1998-99 and 1999-2000, when extensive late-summer ice in the Arctic region made it difficult for the mammals to find sustenance.

They traveled to Baja almost literally skin and bones. Few calves were born and the mortality rate was high. The overall population dropped by nearly a third, from about 26,000 to 17,000.

It was a seemingly apocalyptic period for a species that was once hunted to the brink of extinction, but had benefited from protective measures -- they were declared an endangered species in 1970, then removed from the list in 1995 -- and rebounded to near-historic levels.

Global warming seems to have come to their rescue. Ongoing ice reduction in the Chukchi Sea has allowed for six good feeding seasons and the population has increased to more than 20,000 whales.

Last year, volunteers counted 38 southbound calves, with a high of seven on Jan. 15, and 106 northbound calves, including a high of 10 on April 23.

A few of those whales, now juveniles, have already passed through Southland waters this season, with their parents and more newborns soon to follow.

“You kind of get hooked on watching them and all the other animals,” says Dee Whitehurst, a Sunday volunteer from North Hollywood. “You say, ‘My God, there really are monsters in the ocean.’ Not bad ones, but big ones.”

On this morning, there are no such monsters in sight, only 10 million whitecaps and, overhead, an occasional bird-of-prey struggling in the wind, helping the volunteers make do.

Anyone interested in becoming a volunteer -- more are needed -- may contact Schulman-Janiger via e-mail at janiger@bcf.usc.edu, or visit www.acs-la.org for detailed information.

pete.thomas@latimes.com