Rocking the Boat

During the late 1800s, Hugh Ryono’s ancestors hunted whales off the coast of Taiji, the birthplace of Japan’s whaling industry.

“They used to do what’s known as net whaling. They’d go out there in small boats and net the whales and try to harpoon them. They’d make these little pinpricks at them and try to kill them,” said Ryono, a 40-year-old Fullerton resident who has spent almost a decade trying to keep whales and other marine mammals alive.

Ryono is an animal care volunteer at the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro and a veteran whale watcher for the annual gray whale census.

“It’s ironic that I am doing this, when my entire family heritage was on the other side. My dad’s cousin from Japan worked on a whaler when I was a kid, and we used to visit his ship when it would call in San Pedro. Some of my earliest recollections are of sitting on the rusty harpoons in the hull.”

About three years ago, a Japanese television crew came to the United States to film Ryono on a whale-watching expedition.

“It was important for me to get the chance to relay the information to people in Japan that these animals are fun to watch--alive. And maybe we should keep them alive. But I can understand why they still want to hunt whales. That’s what their heritage is all about.

“It’s like these people in the United States who take their sons out hunting deer, and that’s the American heritage. Well, my family’s heritage is going out on these boats and killing whales and eating whale meat. The biggest mistake the United States ever made was to tell them to stop killing whales, without giving them a good alternative.”

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For those like Ryono who watch whales and rescue stranded marine mammals, it’s a record-breaking season.

El Nino-generated storms are to blame for unusually large numbers of sea lion pups turning up on Southern California beaches, he said. But overloaded animal control agencies are asking the public not to call unless there is an “immediate life-threatening situation,” Ryono said, explaining that many of the young sea lions are just waiting out stormy weather at sea.

He has taken part in numerous rescues of sea lions that were injured by well-intentioned but misguided animal lovers.

“The saddest animal I ever saw come into our care center was this little harbor seal pup. The mother harbor seal had left the pup on the beach to keep it away from predators and went back out to sea to hunt for food. People crowded around this animal, thinking it was abandoned. They thought it needed help and they started pouring water on this poor, little animal that had been safe and warm on the beach. By the time we saw the animal, it was suffering from hypothermia,” a lower than normal body temperature, Ryono explained. “He didn’t make it.”

There also has been a proliferation of gray whale babies seen traveling south in waters off the Southern California coast.

“Gray whales come all the way from the shallow waters of Alaska. They’re mud-suckers. They go to the bottom of the ocean, suck the mud up and eat all the little creatures in there. During winter, the ice moves in and it cues the animals to make the trip all the way down to Baja, Mexico, to mate and bear their calves. The unusual thing about this year is that many of them are not making it to Baja before they mate and bear their calves.

“This is a record year for southbound great whale calves. Our previous record was 44 calves, and we’ve seen over 100 now. Nobody knows the reason why this is happening.

“It’s completely different for northbound calves; we always see lots of them. The northbound calves have had enough time to get their mother’s milk down, they’re stronger, they look bigger and they’re going back to Alaska.”

Whale migration season begins in December and lasts until May, but this month is what Ryono calls “crossover month.”

“It’s when they start going from mainly southbound to mainly northbound. And during a lot of years, we have a lull in activity at this time. There’s a week or two where you don’t see many whales. This year, we think they’re going to connect together; there’s probably not going to be any lull.”

Ryono does a lot of his whale watching from Point Vincente in San Pedro, counting whales and noting their behaviors for the annual gray whale census. In Orange County, some of his favorite viewing spots are the cliffs above Crystal Cove in Laguna Beach for whales, and the Newport Pier and Bolsa Chica State Beach for dolphins. He prefers watching them from land.

“On a whale-watching boat, you’re out there for about three hours, and maybe you’re with a whale for about 20 minutes to a half hour. Standing on a cliff, you can have whales stick around for two hours or more. And you can see all the behaviors, not just the behaviors of animals around boats.

“You can see whales doing barrel rolls under water; you can see whales playing with kelp; you can see them getting ticked off when dolphins and sea lions are bugging them. This is all natural behavior, unaffected by human presence. It’s really a wonderful thing to see.”

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Profile: Hugh Ryono

Age: 40

Hometown: Gardena

Residence: Fullerton

Family: Wife, Pam

Education: Bachelor’s degree in radio and television communications, Cal State Long Beach

Background: Photo technician for Asami Photo during college, 1977-81; freelance photographer and photo finishing specialist, 1981-84; infielder and pitcher in a Nisei Athletic Union amateur baseball league, 1981-91; photographic specialist for Northrop Corp., for stealth technology programs, 1984-92; helped set up first all-digital photography lab in the U.S. in 1990 at Northrop’s B-2 stealth division; photo imaging systems instructor for Agfa since 1993

Sea life: Whale spotter since 1989 for the annual American Cetacean Society Gray Whale Census at Point Vincente; animal care volunteer at the Marine Mammal Care Center at Fort MacArthur (San Pedro) since 1992; media relations officer for San Pedro Mammal Care Center since 1993; “oiled-animal” emergency response team member with the California Oil Spill Emergency Response Network; takes part in marine mammal rescues, treatment and tracking

Watching the water: “You don’t really need to go off to exotic locations when some of the best whale-watching spots are right off our coastline, like Crystal Cove in Laguna. You can go to Bolsa Chica [State Beach] any day of the week, and if you spend enough time sitting on that sand, you’re going to see a dolphin.”

Source: Hugh Ryono; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times