Annual Migration : Whale Census: Volunteers Cast Eyes to the Sea

“Fantastic!” shouted Bill Maier as he peered intently through his binoculars at three spouting Pacific gray whales.

Maier, 39, was standing on the summit of rocky West Point Peak jutting 673 feet out of the blue Pacific on Santa Catalina Island’s narrow West End Peninsula.

One of the whales had just breached the surface of the calm sea, three-fourths of the 45 tons of barnacle-mottled gray mammal spiraling 35 feet out of the water.

“This is what it’s all about,” yelled Pierce Harris, 50, standing spellbound with Maier and Chris Herzig, 22.

The three men are among the dozens of volunteers who arrive, a week at a time, to camp out in the island wilderness and count Pacific gray whales from sunup to sundown as the huge beasts swim by the far side of the 22-mile long island.

Annual Migration

Pacific grays are on their annual 12,000-mile-long round-trip swim from Alaska’s Bering Sea to the warm water lagoons of Baja California where the whales mate and give birth. It is one of the longest migrations on earth.

Since 1979 American Cetacean Society volunteers have operated a census station at Marineland aquatic park, counting the whales and noting their behavior as they swim south and then return north en route to the Arctic. The coastal census station is manned Dec. 1 through May 31.

“Each year we count three times as many whales swimming north by the Palos Verdes Peninsula than south,” explained Alisa Schulman, 30, ACS Whale Census director. “We wondered where all the southbound whales were. Now we know. Large numbers are swimming on the outside of Santa Catalina Island.”

Last year the island census outpost was manned for the first time, for eight weeks. This year volunteers will operate the station

on top of West Point Peak for three months, ending in March.

At the Marineland census station from Dec. 1, 1984, through May 31, 1985, about 3,085 Pacific gray whales were counted going north, 1,002 going south. On Catalina from Dec. 29, 1984, through Jan. 28, 1985, the count was 42 northbound, 407 southbound.

From Dec. 28, 1985, through Jan. 28, about 625 southbound whales were counted from the island. One reason for the higher count is improved weather. Less fog and rain and calm seas has made it easier to spot the whales.

(The northbound and southbound migrations of the whales overlap because the whales leave Alaska and the breeding lagoons of Mexico at different times, depending on their sex and age.)

The census takers have noted differences in whale behavior depending on whether they are close to shore or off the island. Off the Palos Verdes Peninsula, whales will disappear underwater for two-, three- or four-minute dives, sometimes staying beneath the waves for as long as eight minutes. Off Catalina, the whales hold their breath longer, staying under for six to 15 minutes.

Counts of the Pacific gray whales, a protected species near extinction in the 1930s but now estimated to number 18,000, are conducted off the coasts of Oregon, Northern, Central and Southern California.

Coastline Contour

The migrating whales follow the contour of the Pacific coastline for most of their trip, swimming from a few hundred feet from shore to seven or eight miles out. But on encountering the eight Channel Islands off the Southern California coast southbound whales take two different routes.

Some continue to follow the coast, but others fan out through the Channel Islands. Whales swimming on the outside of Santa Catalina Island reach here after passing San Nicolas, Santa Barbara, Anacapa, San Miguel, Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz islands.

“They seem to take a direct course from the northern islands to the west end of Catalina, continuing a couple of miles on the lee side (the side of the island facing the coast), then turning around and going back along the west end and the outside of the island,” noted census taker Harris, a San Diego attorney and wildlife photographer.

In their trip around the island, the whales appear to travel a mile or two, then blow rapidly several times in succession and then “spyhop”--or lift their heads out of the water above the eye--apparently to get a better bearing before reversing direction.

‘Community Decision’

“Look at those three,” said Maier, a San Diego photographer, as three whales swam directly toward one another on the leeward side of the island, then turned and headed around the outside.

“They apparently made a community decision knowing land should be on the left side as they swim south,” observed Herzig, interpreter at the Los Angeles city Parks and Recreation Department’s Cabrillo Marine Museum, which along with ACS sponsors the whale census.

From the island peak the census takers can hear whales breathing. Now and then a mother and calf swim slowly by.

Maier, Harris and Herzig take turns keeping a log recording each whale, noting times sighted, location, sea conditions, weather, direction, number of whales in a pod, and activities such as a raised fluke, spyhopping, breaching, zigzagging, rolling or nursing.

Each Friday a new group of three volunteers comes to the island, transported across the channel without cost by Catalina Express boats and the 10 miles overland by Santa Catalina Island Conservancy Jeep.

Week in Wilderness

The island whale census takers sleep in tents and cook their meals over open fires. They spend a week in a wilderness alive with birds, animals and sea life.

Wild boars, island foxes and goats scurry through the brush. “Hearing an island fox bark is a wonderful sound,” said Harris. Bald eagles, black ravens and a myriad of songbirds fly overhead. Offshore rocks are home for brown pelicans, sea lions and harbor seals.

During the three months of whale census-taking about two dozen volunteers will operate the Catalina outpost three at a time in weeklong shifts.

At Marineland 90 volunteers take whale counts during the six months the census is conducted there. Census takers include college students, teachers, retired people, doctors, lawyers, truck drivers and mail carriers. You name it.

To become a whale census taker a person has to complete a 36-hour course at the Cabrillo Marine Museum in San Pedro.