San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
For whale of a time, go watch cetaceans
With top vantage spots at Point Reyes blocked, give these places a try
Gray whales have begun their winter migration down the California coastline, giving coopedup Bay Area residents ample opportunities to spot the majestic marine mammals for the next several months.
There’s just one catch: Perhaps the single best onshore location to see the migrating whales is closed for construction.
The historic lighthouse and observation deck on the westernmost tip of Point Reyes National Seashore — known among whale aficionados and amateurs as the best vantage point from which to view whales rounding into Bay Area waters — is offlimits as Sir Francis Drake Boulevard undergoes a major overhaul.
Despite the closure, there are plenty of other places to spot the whales on their southern sojourn from arctic Alaskan waters to the shallow lagoons of Baja California, said Carlo Arreglo, a Point Reyes park ranger.
“This is the time of year to see these charismatic, superstar mammals,” he said.
From Bodega Head to Muir Beach Overlook and Point Bonita in the Marin
Headlands, the northern coastline abounds with elevated view points. Within the city limits, Fort Funston and the Lands End Lookout offer good seascape views for spout spotting.
To the south, the parking lots on either side of the Devil’s Slide Trail offer accessible whale watching. The beaches at Point Reyes offer less visibility, but visitors may catch a glimpse of some spouts — and see giant elephant seals in their winter mating season. Hundreds of gray whales will pass the Bay Area each day at the peak of the southbound migration in January. Pregnant whales set to give birth in the warm Baja waters are the first to migrate, followed by thousands more in pods of two to five individuals. Come spring, the whales will begin the journey back to Alaska with their newly birthed calves.
Elevated lookout areas offer the best chance of spotting whales in the water. Bodega Head and Point Reyes are good bets, because the whales use the jutting geography to navigate the coastline, but the whales are visible from other coastal areas, too.
First, Arreglo said, scan the ocean for puffs of steam — that’s the whales exhaling as they surface to take a breath. The blowhole is the first body part to rise out of the water, followed by the back and tail as the whale dives below the surface in one graceful motion.
“Bring binoculars, it helps,” said Bill Keener, a cetacean researcher at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito.
While whale spouts can be sighted at all hours of the day, Keener prefers to head out in the morning hours, when the sun is angled away from the water. Direct sunlight can make the whales hard to spot.
That gray whales can still be seen at all along the California coast — let alone by the thousands — is a small miracle, experts say. The 40ton marine mammals were nearly hunted to extinction by the 1930s, but their numbers began to rebound with the decline of commercial whaling. Gray whales are now protected by international conservation measures.
“California is one of few places in world you can see multiple species of whales,” Keener said. “It’s an amazing wildlife opportunity right off our coast.”
With indoor activities shuttered, some local families have turned to whale watching, said Nancy Black, a marine biologist who runs Monterey Bay Whale Watch. The company has been operating tours at half capacity, wiping down surfaces and practicing social distancing.
“It’s great — people are bored at home otherwise,” Black said.
Black noticed that whale migration began a few weeks late this year, a trend that she believes may be due to climate change. Scientists who study gray whales say warming Arctic waters could change the whales’ feeding and migration habits . Climate change has also been named as one possible culprit for the mass dieoff that caused an unusually high number of whale fatalities last year, when more than a dozen carcasses washed up on Bay Area shores.
Changing marine ecosystems are worrying Keener and his colleagues at the Marine Mammal Center. The harmful algae that flourish in warmer waters could spell trouble for all marine life, he said, not just gray whales. That’s why he feels compelled to raise awareness for the whales in order to protect them from future harm.
“These are some of the biggest animals that have ever lived on the planet,” he said. “They live a different life than terrestrial mammals. They give birth under water. They have big brains. They have these amazing migrations,” Keener said.
Arreglo, too, is awed by the mysterious mammals that live mostly unseen below the ocean’s surface, passing behemoths that have endured even though humans almost hunted them to extinction.
“There is a sense of mystery about these massive creatures,” he said. “There is something to be said for having some mystery in our lives.”