NEWPORT BEACH : Children Have Whale of a Good Launch

It is a Newport Beach tradition signaling the change of seasons but has nothing to do with groundhogs and shadows.

To welcome summer for each of the past 36 years, a group of school children launches a 30-foot fiberglass whale into Upper Newport Bay for a summer-long swim.

And so on Friday morning under a cloudy cover, two dozen third-graders from Mariners Elementary School gathered at the edge of the water.

With all their collective might, they pushed the blue behemoth off the sand and into the bay.

“It didn’t feel slippery like a real whale,” said Jean Geddes, 9, a third-grader. “But it was good enough.”

Geddes and her friend, Tina Fulce, also 9, said the celebration signals something more than the prospect of good weather.

“Summer is when there is no school,” Geddes said, “and we get to go swimming.”

As the whale lounged in the water, the students got a quick lesson from Nancy Bruland, a county park ranger, on the endangered species of birds that come to Newport Bay during their migration.

Bruland brought along a stuffed coyote and brown pelican, one of the endangered birds which frequent the bay.

The summertime ritual was started in 1958 at the Newport Dunes resort, which is at the edge of the bay near Backbay Drive and Jamboree Road.