Whales May Be Heading Home
Two whales - lost in California freshwater for weeks - may be closing in on their ocean home.
The mother humpback and her calf have entered San Francisco Bay after passing under the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.
If the humpbacks can navigate south around a peninsula and an island, few obstacles would remain on their route past Alcatraz to the Golden Gate, the strait that connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean.
Still, the fear remains that the whales might head south instead of west, passing under the Bay Bridge and into the long southern half of the bay.
Tuesday evening, the whales were spotted swimming about ten miles from the Golden Gate.
The whale and her calf had been spotted in the river May 13th and got as far as 90 miles inland to the Port of Sacramento before turning around.
As the pair gets closer to the ocean, the calf has become more active, reports CBS News correspondent Sandra Hughes.
"They're now in a more saline waterway which we know is much more healthy for them," said Bernadette Fees of the California Department of Fish and Game.
The two whales were spotted in the Sacramento River on May 13 and got as far as 90 miles inland to the Port of Sacramento before turning around.
Biologists said the saltier water where the mother humpback whale and her calf have been circling has helped reverse some of the health problems caused by long exposure to fresh water.
Lesions that had formed on the humpbacks' skin over the weekend appeared to be sloughing off, California Department of Fish and Game deputy director Bernadette Fees said. Scientists also reported that a coating of algae that was clinging to the mother farther upriver had fallen away.
Antibiotics had been injected into the whales on Saturday to try to slow the damage from wounds likely caused earlier by a boat's keel.
The two whales spent Monday near the Benicia-Martinez Bridge, about 45 miles from the Pacific before finally swimming past it. Boats blocked the entrance to the Napa River and were to be positioned at the mouth of the Petaluma River near San Francisco Bay to keep them on track, Fees said.
Despite the pair's health problems, officials did not plan to take any more action to prod them toward the Golden Gate Bridge.
"It's all up to the whales at the end of the day," said Jim Oswald, spokesman for the Marine Mammal Center, a nonprofit wildlife group helping coordinate the rescue.
Memorial Day sightseers had swarmed the waterfront near Benicia to catch a glimpse of the whales, while the U.S. Coast Guard worked to maintain a 500-yard safety zone around the two.
About 100 boats carrying would-be whale watchers surrounded the pair as news of their location traveled, and Coast Guard crews hauled several swimmers out of the water as they tried to approach the whales, Lt. Larry Curran said.