The State - News from Oct. 21, 1985

The humpback whale in the Sacramento River Delta, seemingly unwilling to cross back under a small bridge, spent the day swimming in circles in about 15 feet of water, the U.S. Coast Guard reported. For the second day in a row, the whale was trapped in dead-end Shag Slough, a narrow channel about 10 miles north of Rio Vista. Crowds gathered on the bank to watch the whale swim back and forth along a 100-yard stretch of the slough as the Coast Guard prevented all boat traffic from entering the area. The whale, which entered San Francisco Bay 11 days ago, cannot get back to the deeper water of the Sacramento River without swimming through a narrow opening between the pilings of the bridge.