Concerns Grow for 'Vulnerable' Baby Gray Whale Born Too Far From Safety

Whale watchers in California received two for the price of one when a female gray whale gave birth to a young calf right in front of their boat. This species usually gives birth in the lagoons of Mexico's Baja California, and experts are concerned that this mother has a long way to go before she and her calf reach safety.

Photos of the "extremely rare" spectacle and footage of the mother with her newborn calf were shared on Facebook by Captain Dave's Dana Point Dolphin and Whale Watching Safari, a boat tour agency in the city of Dana Point, California.

"It's something you dream about and hope that someday might happen, but you don't really expect it," Dave Anderson, who runs the tour agency, told Newsweek.

Dana Point was recently named the first whale heritage site in the United States. It is an area where community members are encouraged to care for and protect whales, dolphins and porpoises in their area. However, this is still a long way off from the gray whale's typical breeding grounds.

Anderson, who was not on the boat, said that his crew had been following the whale for about 45 minutes before the birth took place. "It was just the mom and then a bunch of blood came out...and then about 45 seconds later the calf popped up," he said.

It is extremely rare to see a gray whale birth, and not a lot is known about the process. However, this particular birth appeared to be fairly relaxed. "She didn't seem to be in a lot of distress," Anderson said. "She wasn't acting like she was, you know, in pain, and she wasn't acting in any way that made anybody think there was a problem.... It seemed like a fairly gentle process."

Andrew Trites, a professor and director of the Marine Mammal Research Unit of the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia, said that gray whales tend to give birth around the same time, during the last two weeks of January.

"If [this whale] was a human you would probably say she was a bit premature, but certainly from the video [the calf] looks to be full of life, and it's got all the potential in the world as long as Mom can keep her safe," Trites said.

In the video, the baby whale can be seen swimming as soon as it leaves its mother. The question is: How does it know how to swim?

"Well, how does a baby ultimately know how to walk or crawl? It's in their DNA," Trites said. "In the case of a whale, it's either you sink or you swim. They have to swim in order to avoid being preyed upon and to be able to stay with their moms to nurse."

While the ability to swim might be encoded in their DNA, they do not start out as Olympic swimmers. "This calf was not really too coordinated," Anderson said. "Its tail loops were kind of bent over a little bit, and it was flopping around kind of awkwardly, and Mom was kind of helping it up to the surface."

What happened next was more unusual, according to Anderson. "They actually came over by the boat, and she kind of rubbed her head on the underside of our boat."

Anderson said that this behavior was more common in the lagoons of Baja California. "They will bring their calves over and let the people pet them. The calves love it and the moms love it too. And they're not afraid because they're used to that happening."

This was not always the case. Fifty years ago, the whales were almost hunted to extinction in the region, and as a result the mothers were very protective of their young.

"They were called devil fish, and the fishermen down there were super afraid of them," Anderson said. "And then in the '70s one fisherman was out fishing and one of the whales came over and stuck its head out of the water...and he actually got the courage up to pet the whale because it was just hanging out there. And then after that it just started happening more and more."

Trites said that this behavior may have been learned by the whales to help their young identify fishing vessels. "Maybe it lowers the risk of being run over by the boats," he said.

Gray whales have the longest migration of any mammal, traveling 17,000 kilometers, or over 10,000 miles, every year. "They travel all the way from the Chukchi Sea in Alaska down to the lagoons in Baja and back," Anderson said. "It's a really long trip."

The lagoons in Baja are a perfect nursing ground for the baby whales. The water is warmer; there are fewer predators, like killer whales; and they provide a safe space for the baby whales to master their swimming skills and to grow from their mother's milk.

However, this mother and her calf have a long way to go from Dana Point. "She's got about 700 kilometers or so that she's still got to swim to get to a lagoon," Trites said. "She can't push the calf there, she can't carry the calf. The calf is going to have to swim. But it's not going to have very strong swimming muscles just yet, so during this time there's a risk of encountering killer whales. There's relatively little she can do to defend her calf from killer whales."

Anderson, who has written a book about the life of a young calf called Lily: A Gray Whale's Odyssey, said that the journey would not be easy. "She has to keep her calf safe, and that calf is really, really vulnerable.... She has to try and control her calf and keep it going in the direction she wants. You can imagine a little infant, just born, trying to keep that animal from being curious and wandering off. So she's got a real tough job ahead of her."

If the pair make it safely to the lagoons, they will spend about three months there building strength before it is time to head back north. In its first year, the calf will double in length and increase its weight by six times. "Within a year, it's going to be about two-thirds of the size of an adult in terms of its length, so it's going to do a huge amount of growth," Trites said.

With the footage taken of these whales, Trites said, it should be possible to determine whether they survive the journey to the lagoons.

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