Whale of a Show : Reports That Boat Tours Disturb Annual Migration Seem Unfounded

Despite fears that whale-watchers are scaring away the objects of their passion, the annual migration got off to a strong start last week off the Ventura County coastline.

And 50 or so tourists who were treated to an hourlong ride-along by a group of California gray whales en route to their breeding grounds in Mexico were ecstatic.

It was exactly the kind of season opener that commercial boat owners in Ventura County were hoping for, after 1990 was marred by reports that whales were drifting away from coastal waters to avoid traffic in their yearly migration to their reproductive grounds off the coast of Baja California.

Last week, those reports appeared to be unfounded. The whales not only showed up exactly where they were supposed to be, they seemed to enjoy the spotlight, swimming leisurely in front of the boat, never staying underwater for more than a few seconds.

The first giant whale emerged off the coast of Santa Cruz Island as the passengers aboard the Speed Twin leaned over the front deck railing expectantly. Cavorting at the surface, no more than 100 feet away from the ship, an adult California gray whale began shooting water and air through its blowhole, firing it 10 feet into the air with a whuffing sound.

Instantly, three more whales emerged alongside the first, spouted and dove back underwater, flipping their tails, or flukes, into the air.

Barely recovered from the initial excitement, the tourists adjusted binoculars, snapped away with cameras or simply shook their heads in awe. “Look at that!” they cried. “Look! Look!” They repeated those comments for more than an hour as the whales re-emerged time and again. “They’re beautiful!” “This is great!” “I never thought I’d see one!”

Steve Kilpatrick, a marine expert accompanying the expedition, appeared to be just as excited as the passengers who were seeing the whales for the first time. “Enjoy, folks,” he announced over a loudspeaker. “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

“They can stay below the surface for 20 minutes if they want to, or they can swim away and avoid us easily,” Kilpatrick said. “But these are friendly guys and they don’t seem to mind us.”

Whales were sighted all last week, Kilpatrick said. And he predicted that will continue. “They always come,” he said. “During the peak period in February and March, I can almost guarantee you that you’ll see whales every time out.”

This year, about 21,000 whales are expected to migrate south along the coast of California, from the Arctic waters off the coast of Siberia and Alaska to their preferred breeding grounds: the calm, warm saltwater lagoons carved out of the Baja peninsula and Sinaloa coastline in Mexico.

The migration past Ventura County began in late December and will end in mid-April, when the last whales return north. Experts say waters off of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties are prime whale-watching areas because the California coastline turns east-west just south of Point Conception, creating a funnel between the coast and the Channel Islands where the whales must swim. Whales can be seen almost every day through the migration period, experts say.

In Ventura County, the two boat companies that conduct whale-watching tours--Island Packers in Ventura Harbor and Cisco’s Sport Fishing in Channel Islands Harbor--have expeditions almost daily. They served about 20,000 customers last season, at a cost of about $20 for an adult for a half-day trip.

Both companies say that there is little money left over after paying their crews and buying fuel, but the whale-watching trips serve as promotional activities for the fishing and marine life expeditions they conduct year-round.

The whale-watching tours always include marine experts who tell passengers about the animals they’re seeing:

Gray whales reach up to 50 feet in length and weigh 50,000 pounds fully grown. They have a life expectancy of about 65 years. They head south from Arctic waters in October, when the feeding grounds that supply the small, shrimplike crustaceans they like are covered by ice.

Their migration of 6,000 miles, which takes about three months each way, is the longest by any mammal on earth. By February, the calves born in waters near Mexico have developed a layer of blubber that will shield them from the cold, and the whales begin their northern trek.

They tend to travel in groups called pods, and they follow predictable migration patterns. That predictability led to their near extinction in the 1920s, when whale hunting was at its height.

Since then, thanks to increased protection, they have made a strong comeback, especially since they were declared an endangered species in the 1960s.

However, studies conducted during the past two years in Orange County on gray whales and in Hawaii on humpback whales raised concerns among the environmental community that the whales were being threatened by humans once again--not by hunters this time, but by whale-watchers.

Those studies appeared to show that whales were altering their migration patterns and moving away from breeding grounds to avoid being pursued by boats.

Of special concern to the researchers were the effects of sound from motorboats on the whales. Cetaceans depend heavily on sounds to communicate, and the studies showed that the whales were being separated from their groups and otherwise disturbed by the sounds of encroaching motorboats.

One researcher in Hawaii compared the effect of jet skiers in the whales’ breeding grounds to “a chain-saw in a nursery.”

Commercial boat owners are quick to say that they are not the ones that cause the disturbance. It is the recreational boater, they say, who approaches the whales at high speed, circling them, crossing their paths and not keeping a safe distance from them.

Under federal law, harassment of whales carries a maximum fine of $20,000 or a year in jail. But the law is rarely enforced because it is difficult to prove that a boater set out to harass a whale.

Commercial boats such as the Speed Twin say they strictly adhere to guidelines set forth by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which some environmentalists are trying to convert into law.

Under those guidelines, boat captains are asked to stay at least 100 feet from the whales and to approach them from behind at a low speed.

Mark Connally of Island Packers said he is a strong supporter of those guidelines because, among other things, his whale-watching business has dropped by 40% this year due to negative publicity.

Connally said that even though some experts had predicted that the whales would stay away from the coast, his boats have sighted whales every time out since the season began shortly after Christmas. “Contrary to what some people say, the whales are still coming through the Channel Islands,” he said.

Charles Woodhouse, a whale expert at the Santa Barbara History Museum, said he has not seen any changes in the whales’ migration patterns around Ventura County.

“I’ve seen the whales drift further offshore around Los Angeles when storm runoff is dumped into the sea after big rainstorms, but I don’t think the boat traffic up here is affecting them,” he said.

“Food resource and water currents may affect their migration from time to time, but I have no indication that whale watching affects them when it’s done right. If the boats keep their distance and approach the whales in the right way, the whales get used to their presence.”

Whether the whales enjoy human company may still be a matter of debate, but for the spirited group on the Speed Twin one recent morning, coming close to the whales was an experience of a lifetime.

“I’ve been in many whale-watching expeditions and it’s always like, ‘There it is! Did you see the whale?’ And I say, ‘Yes, I guess,’ but I never really saw them,” said Inez Wilson, 72, who was part of senior citizens group from Walla Walla, Wash. “This time I saw the whales.”

Helmut Reschenofer, 24, a vacationing bird-watcher from Munich, Germany, had driven from Los Angeles to make the trip. He was leaving for Florida the next day, he said, and this was his only chance to see the largest mammal species on earth in its natural state.

“I’ve seen dolphins in Indonesia and a lot of other things, but whales--they’re something special,” he said.