But they need to be getting home to the cold salt water fairly soon.
Whale rescue to crank up volume
Humpbacks get weekend break before louder effort to drive them out of Delta.
By Carrie Peyton Dahlberg and Matt Weiser - Bee Staff Writers
Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, May 19, 2007
As squeals, groans and pops of fellow humpbacks again failed to coax two wandering whales away from the Port of Sacramento on Friday, rescuers began preparing to drive them out.
That operation, tentatively set for Tuesday, will take an armada of roughly 50 boats stationed along the Delta, heaps of metal pipes and a cadre of pipe-bangers ready to make so much noise the mother and calf just can't stand to stay.
Think of it as tough love for whales.
The creatures can't dawdle endlessly in the freshwater turning basin that leads toward silted-shut locks. They have perhaps four to six weeks before the mother faces serious malnutrition, said veterinarian Frances Gulland of the Marine Mammal Center.
Skin damage -- blistering and peeling -- would come sooner, but scientists know that Humphrey, the last humpback lost amid the sloughs, recovered fully from skin problems he developed toward the end of a 26-day freshwater jaunt in 1985.
So far, there has been no significant deterioration in the whales' health, said Gulland -- but also no progress with the gentler approach of trying to draw the whales toward appealing sounds.
