Delta And Dawn Home Free?
(CBS)
It has been 18 days since the mother humpback and her calf were discovered heading up the Sacramento River the wrong way. Under the terms of the Endangered Species Act, state officials are given the power and the finances to pay for rescue efforts when an animal on the list is in trouble. The mother and calf were. They were stuck in the Port of Sacramento 90 miles upstream in fresh water! They had wounds and the mother, they believed, might still be nursing her calf. Without salt water the mother couldn't feed. It could turn into a serious situation. They believed these two had wandered off their migration course from Mexico. Usually Humpbacks give birth in the warm waters between Hawaii and Mexico during the winter and then head up to Alaska for feeding time over the summer with their young in tow.
So rescue workers from California Fish and Game decided to try and lure the whales back down stream and into the open ocean. First they started with those weird underwater whale noises. These were whale feeding noises. When that didn’t work they realized maybe they were using the wrong kind of whale feeding sounds.
Attempt number two to get them down the river was herding. They used a flotilla of boats to try and ease them down stream. This sort of worked but then the whales dove back under the flotilla.
