Humpback whales have begun to make the Bay Area their home this fall, and their spouts are a daily sight across the area and even into the bay itself.
Stretching from Monterey to Bodega Bay, videos and images have been going viral with whales breaching beside whale watching boats and surfers. A video, shown on the West Marin Feed Instagram, even showed a humpback whale breaching some 40 feet from a whale watching ship just south of Stinson Beach. If one is looking to see whales in Sonoma, the best spot to see them is Bodega Head. In Marin County, one can see whales best off the Marin Headlands coast and at Stinson Beach.
However, much of the attention toward the whales has been on Pacifica in the south bay, where photographers have been flocking to docks and shorelines to view the consistent sights of spouting humpbacks very close to shore. Even the local Facebook group has become overrun with people not local to the area, excited to learn and share their photographs, according to the Mercury News.
While the main concentration and marvel have been in the south bay, where the whales have come very close to shore, there have been many near shore sightings. Many we have spoken with in Pacifica, San Francisco Bay and near our homes in Marin and Sonoma, have noted that the whales are much more near shore than most years.
Most significantly, whales have been consistently seen from Marin in the San Francisco Bay itself, which has not been historically common.
“This is something new as of 2016, so it’s very exciting from a personal perspective,” said Kathi George, whale conservationist at the Marine Mammal Center, located in Sausalito. “Like how awesome is it that you can go stand on the Golden Gate Bridge and see a whale, or be in San Rafael or San Francisco and be able to see whales? That’s amazing.”
George was quick to point out that it is not all great news for the whales.
“It’s also a cause for concern, because these are very busy urban waterways with recreational boaters, commercial vessels, ferries and a lot of fishing. These activities will increase the risk for both people and the whales,” George said.
Due to the high number of whales in the bay, crossing over busy and vital shipping lines for international container ships, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) announced in August that vessels must slow down when around the Bay Area.
“When encountering marine mammals, slow down and operate at no-wake speed. Put your engine in neutral when whales approach to pass,” said a NOAA press release in August. This is out of concern for the humpback whales’ safety and numbers, which are still returning to their old counts after being listed as endangered in 1973.
The new protocol for vessels will last through November, when the whales typically leave our shores.
“This slowdown would give the whale potentially time to get away, or if there was a strike, it would be a likely, not a lethal strike on that whale,” George said.
Ship strikes are far from the only concern for the whales. Whales are often entangled in fishing nets, which can trap them, leading to an untimely end. According to the International Whaling Commission, around 300,000 whales and dolphins are killed annually due to entanglement. Seeing that fishing nets and lines are such a threat to whales around the world, NOAA has begun and ended different fishing seasons whenever a significant number of whales are present.
Each year, more whales arrive on the California coast, raising increased concern about ship strikes and entanglements. Yet, this is also a sign of significant hope for humpback and gray whale populations making their steady comeback after a close call with extinction.
Ever since 1971, when the last whaling operation on the west coast, out of Richmond, was forced to close, the numbers of whales in the eastern Pacific Ocean have increased greatly. Some specific populations of humpback whales have even been removed from the endangered species list.
However, other groups of humpbacks, such as ones that breed off the coast of Mexico and another group that breeds in Central America, are still making their way back to their historically high numbers. These two populations are the whales we see today on our coastlines.
Tim Markowitz, UC Berkeley professor and field research associate for the Marine Mammal Center, says the possible reason these populations have had a slower return to their high numbers is due to these shipstrikes and entanglements with fishing equipment, pointing out why NOAA has implemented a slowdown of ships in and around the San Francisco Bay Area.
As for why they are here now, Markowitz points mostly toward their food. Since humpbacks often hunt krill and northern anchovies, Markowitz, along with George, has pointed to a high number of anchovies being the greatest “driver” of the whales being so close to shore.
Their presence also is an indication of the overall health of the marine ecosystem.
“These are flexible foragers who go where the food is,” Markowitz said. “As such, they are indicators of environmental health. Whales inshore likely mean either less food offshore, more food inshore or both.”
Climate change could also likely be a factor. However, with the growing length of time whales spend in the area, there is no significant evidence at this time pointing to it as a major influence. Markowitz did note that other marine mammals, such as California bottlenose dolphins, have moved their range more northward as water temperatures have increased, and climate change appears to be a factor.
All of this points to a golden future for the whales that have now found feeding under the golden Golden Gate, yet shipping companies may find it a slight annoyance. With these humpbacks listed as threatened and endangered, these slowdowns, which NOAA has implemented, will likely become a more common occurrence, slowing down an incredibly busy international shipping lane.
However, whales dying in fishing nets will have a greater impact on our local communities.
For the past few years, whales have begun to strain the Bay Area Dungeness crabbers. Humpback and gray whales are spending more time in the Bay Area, leaving in December rather than early November, as they have historically done. So NOAA has started the crabbing season in the latter part of December, cutting into the peak holiday season for crabs in the area.
But all of this, ultimately, shows that conservation efforts are working. With the end of all whaling on the west coast in 1971, and the increased conservation efforts of the 1970s, along with the creation of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, whales, and many other species, have been saved from human-caused extinction. If the trend continues, humpbacks may become a Bay Area mainstay.
