Whale at Bridge He Won’t Cross : Telapathy used in Hopes of Makiong Creature Homesick

Having tried everything from music to mental telepathy to coax a wayward whale down the Sacramento River, marine biologists and the U.S. Coast Guard pulled back Thursday in hopes the giant mammal will head homeward on its own.

However, the 40-foot humpback spent most of the day cruising up and down a two-mile stretch of the river north of the Rio Vista drawbridge--even though traffic on the bridge was briefly halted in an attempt to entice him to swim under it.

“At this point we’re going to sit and watch,” said Mark Ferrari, a California Marine Mammal Center biologist who has been monitoring the 80,000-pound whale’s progress since it entered San Francisco Bay eight days ago and began swimming up the Sacramento River, where scientists fear it could become stranded and die.

Marine scientists became so desperate to lure the whale to the Pacific Ocean that they tried mental telepathy Wednesday to herd the whale downriver, Ferrari disclosed Thursday.

Four volunteers from the New Frontiers Institute who say they have psychic ability followed the whale in Coast Guard boats and sent the animal telepathic images of the open ocean and a safe passageway under the Rio Vista bridge, said Cherie Gierak, one of the four.

That was the day the whale first turned southward and swam an estimated 12 miles downstream to the bridge.

“What we used out there was a soothing, coaxing, guidance telepathy,” Gierak said in an interview. “We worked as a group mind. The four of us tried to create a push for the sea.”

Marine scientists could not say whether the telepathic messages had any effect on the whale. But Ferrari said he and Gierak were planning to launch a smaller-scale psychic attempt Thursday when the Coast Guard decided not to participate in any further rescue attempts.

Harold Smith, officer in charge of the Rio Vista Coast Guard station, said that because of the time it subtracts from other duties, the Coast Guard will no longer send vessels to observe the whale unless either the animal or boaters are endangered.

Meanwhile, the National Marine Fisheries Service ordered the Marine Mammal Center to halt efforts after today to guide the whale out of the delta, according to Lynn Amaya-Sherman, a spokeswoman for the center. Ferrari said he was told by the Marine Fisheries Service that beginning Saturday, federal agents would begin citing boaters who got too close to the whale.

For the first since it entered the delta, the whale Thursday lifted its tail out of the water repeatedly as it dived, delighting hundreds of spectators who lined the banks.

But more importantly, photographs of the tail may enable the Marine Mammal Center, which is based in Marin County, to identify the animal, according to Debbie Glockner-Ferrari, also a marine biologist with the center.

About half of the estimated 1,200 humpback whales remaining in the world have been identified and catalogued through photographs of their tails, which, like human fingerprints, are different for each individual, she said.

The whale’s dives and continued strong swimming encouraged the husband-and-wife team of marine biologists, who said it is an indication the whale is surviving well in the fresh-water delta.

“He could possibly live there indefinitely,” Glockner-Ferrari said.

The whale also displayed his fins for the first time, showing off scars that indicate he is a male, she said. The marks most likely came from fighting with other males during the mating season.

During the afternoon, the whale came within 50 feet of the heavily used Rio Vista bridge, which has seemed to be a barrier to its southward progress for the last two days.

The bridge has been constantly jammed with cars and trucks while construction work is under way.

When the whale approached, traffic and the bridge work were halted for about 15 minutes, but the whale turned back and headed north again.

During the night Wednesday, the humpback was reported to have entered the river’s deep-water fishing channel, about 25 miles from Sacramento, the farthest north the whale has traveled up the delta.