How do they know where to go?

The January 2012 Scientific American examines the role of the earth's magnetic field:

• Dozens of animal species, from ants to whales, have well-documented abilities to detect the geomagnetic field and use it for orientation and navigation.
• After some false starts, researchers may have now located the organs for this magnetic sense, and they are finally understanding the physics that underpins it.
• Some animals may use microscopic magnetic particles to detect magnetic fields; others might harness quantum effects on certain pigments in the eye.

Subscription required to view online or you can buy the issue.

Birthday!

I photographed a birth today! The mother-to-be was laboring restlessly when we arrived about noon. We settled in to observe.

She had dug a deep trench on one side of her, but as labor progressed, she moved around more.

She stayed in the same general area. That's her, center right top. The beach is pretty crowded.

She moved herself out of her trench.

 At one point, a male came near her, as he evaded another bull. She barked him away.

 The pup in its sac bulged out.

 She looked huge as she strained with contractions.

Finally her water broke.

The birth proceeded quickly after that.

 The pup arrived flippers first. They come headfirst about 60 percent of the time, flippers first 40 percent.  All the births I've seen before were headfirst.

 She seemed like a good mother. She turned to the pup right away.

She chased the gulls away but didn't go nuts at them.

When we left, mother and pup were resting comfortably.

Pup season

Plenty of pups on the beach. Several births this morning, but I wasn't in the right place to photograph any of them. Visitors were delighted.

The tide was pretty high, 6.2 feet, covering the rocks where the harbor seals rest. One showed up on the beach, resting with the elephant seals. He looked healthy and happy and soon returned to the water.

A scrap of the sac clings to this newborn.

The USGS Wildlife biologist reports that numbers are less than on the same December date in 2010, about the same as they were in 2009, but the season isn't in full swing. He'll do a definitive census at the peak of the season, in late January. As of December 28, there were just under 200 females on the beach at Piedras Blancas.

Gray whales heading south

Tony Barboza reports in the Los Angeles Times:

December 28, 2011

Gray whales cruise through Southern California waters every winter, but this month the migratory giants have shown up so early and in such numbers that they are astounding many longtime observers.

Whale spotters stationed at Point Vicente in Rancho Palos Verdes have logged a record 163 sightings so far this December, more than they have seen at this point in 28 years.

Although the gray whale-watching season doesn't typically start until the end of December, the unprecedented number of early arrivals is delighting tourists, boaters and divers as the animals travel south along the coast to Mexico.

PHOTOS: Gray whale migration

Volunteers for the American Cetacean Society/Los Angeles Chapter Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project work from sunup to sundown between Dec. 1 and May 15, using binoculars and high-powered spotting scopes to find whales and log their numbers from an overlook at the Point Vicente Interpretive Center.

"I've seen some pretty good years but never anything like this," said Joyce Daniels, a volunteer who heads the whale census from noon to dusk. On Monday, when there were more than two dozen sightings, "We had whales everywhere. So many I was having trouble figuring out which whale was which," she said. "It's a real adrenaline rush to have so many whales."

After spotting them by their spouts, the eagle-eyed observers determine whether they are indeed gray whales by their mottled coloring, the shape of their flukes or the gentle notches in their backs. For each confirmed sighting, they note the whale's location and what direction it was swimming and add it to a running tally on a dry erase board. Visitors are offered binoculars to scan for the creatures themselves.

By this point in December last year, the observers had spotted 26 gray whales. The previous record was 133, spotted in 1996.

It's something of a mystery why so many gray whales are passing through Southern California this early in the season. But it could have to do with climate, food supplies or other conditions far away in Arctic waters, where the huge mammals begin their annual journey to the shallow lagoons and bays of Baja California to give birth. It's also possible that more are being spotted because they are venturing nearer to shore.

More than 20,000 gray whales migrate each year from the Arctic to Baja California and back again in the spring. Their population, once depleted by commercial whaling, successfully rebounded and was taken off the endangered species list in 1994.

The influx of gray whales has sightseeing vessels off to a busy start. Already, divers have captured dramatic underwater video within an arm's reach of a juvenile gray whale in Laguna Beach.

On an excursion Tuesday out of San Pedro's 22nd Street Landing — the first of the year for the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium's Whalewatch program — a small boatload of whale seekers crowded along the bow of the ship, marveling as a gray whale spouted and surfaced over and over again a few miles from the Port of Los Angeles.

Gray whales, which can grow up to 50 feet long, arrive so predictably each winter that decades ago, even as other species struggled, they became a reliable draw for sightseers, said Bernardo Alps, a volunteer naturalist for the Cabrillo Whalewatch program.

"They're really the species that started whale watching here in Southern California in the 1950s," he said. "The idea of watching them instead of hunting them."

Though it may take months to learn if the gray whales' strong showing this month is part of a larger, seasonal uptick — sightings typically peak by the end of January — their admirers are hoping it means the animals are healthy, well-fed and reproducing.

"It's really incredible. It may very well be the whales are coming earlier or coming in closer," said Alisa Schulman-Janiger, director and coordinator of the whale census. "To me, it's a very good sign that things are going very well with them."

Protecting the Coast

Catherine Ryan Hyde summarizes the struggle Cambria has had with its own governing body, the Community Services District, to protect the local environment. The area is legally protected by state and federal law, but the CSD board of directors has pursued invading it to build a desalination plant. The full text of her summary includes video of some of the players and meetings.

For about three years, a small, committed group of Cambrians have spoken loudly, factually, and often eloquently against drilling on the beach, at the mouth of Santa Rosa Creek, in pursuit of desalination.The creek/lagoon is a highly environmentally sensitive area. In fact, it is a protected natural preserve. It would stand to reason that a careful environmental impact report would be prepared for any project in such an area. Or, better yet, that no project be done there at all.
So that's what the Cambria Community Services District did, right?
Well . . . no. Their original plan was to categorically exempt themselves from any CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) review. (Cambria Activists_and_Mercury_Put_Desal_Plan_in_Retrogade.pdf ) In January 2010, the CCSD called a special meeting to announce that, together with the Army Corps of Engineers, geotechnical drilling would take place in front of Shamel County Park and on Santa Rosa Creek Beach—very fast. Within two months. The meeting announcement was poorly timed (over the New Year's weekend), given on unusually short-notice, and the work strangely immediate. It all gave the impression that they hoped the public would have no time to object. (They have never explained, to this very day, how, when, or by whom the site was chosen.) When lots of people showed up and registered lots of objections anyway, the CCSD withdrew that tactic and tried instead for a Negative Declaration — far from ideal in the opinion of most environmentalists, but at least it's a type of CEQA review. As such, it involves allowing both citizens and public agencies to respond.
Citizen letters aside, the project received detailed comments from such agencies as the State Department of Fish and Game, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the California Department of Parks and Recreation, the Native American Heritage Commission, and the County Air Pollution Control District, to name just a few.
Their concerns included public safety, endangered species, mercury hazards, loss of public access, loss of access to a children's playground, construction on the beach, vehicles on the beach, and piecemealing environmental review by separating the drilling plan from the actual desalination plant.
Those are big hurdles to any project.
So what did the CCSD do? They announced that the geotesting (drilling for paleochannels under the sand that might support a subsurface desal intake) was not their project at all, but the Army Corp of Engineers' project. Completely. Retroactively. I'm not sure exactly how that works, but it seemed to involve careful phrasing. They were not "turning the project over" to the Army Corps of Engineers. Rather, they contended, they'd discovered the overlooked fact that it always had been the ACE's project. Oh, right, and that it's not a "project." It's only an "investigation." One envisions the Army Corps going down to the beach to ask the sand a few questions.
In truth, it was a bit more invasive. It involved drilling a number of wells — as deep as 150 feet — and lining them with PVC pipe, which would later have to be augured out. As much as could be augured, anyway. The bulk of the thousands of pounds of shards would then be sifted out of the sand. Oh, and then the plan was to build a desal plant nearby, but the two objectives were artificially separated at this point, because there's no way to make Cambria's desal plant federal.
Having federalized the project to their own satisfaction, the CCSD then abandoned CEQA review. Because CEQA is a state process. The ACE would now conduct a NEPA review, the federal version. Except all the ACE did toward an environmental impact report was simply to grant themselves a categorical exclusion from NEPA.
The next sound heard around Cambria was that of heads exploding.
I want to note that I've read the NEPA handbook for citizens. Categorical exclusion was intended for such minimal-impact projects as outhouses and hiking trails, or changing all the light bulbs in a public building to more environmentally friendly ones.
Now, you can imagine that concerned Cambrians felt we'd been the victim of an end run around California environmental law.  21,000-pound drill rigs were about to roll onto a beach that's so delicate it won't even tolerate my 15-pound leashed dog. (And, being a law-abiding citizen, I trust that this rule exists for a reason and don't take her there.)  Our last line of defense seemed to be the California Coastal Commission, which had been stripped of its jurisdiction to grant or deny a coastal development permit, since this was being passed off as a federal project. The CCC could only declare the "investigation" consistent or inconsistent with the California Coastal Act.
In May 2010, the commission conditionally allowed the drilling. I'm not entirely sure what happened, though I attended — and spoke at — that meeting. (Although we later found out that only the CCC staff — not the commissioners — had seen the agency and public letters of objection.) Also unsure as to what had happened was Commissioner Esther Sanchez, who spoke eloquently against allowing the project.
When I emailed later to thank her, she sent me a rather stunning personal reply that stated, among other things, "It was as if no one wanted to listen to the problems that I saw with this item.  I took the time to look at the record — specifically searching for the information upon which staff would have relied in making recommendations that the drilling was consistent with our state's laws — and found the record wholly lacking. It was as if we were supposed to take staff's 'word for it.' I was equally disappointed that some of my colleagues seemed to just want to move on and not take the time to ensure that in fact there was a basis for a decision of consistency.
"I believe it was and is incontrovertible that this is an environmentally sensitive area. I wonder if staff had not been so openly controversial whether others would have joined me. I have discussed the matter with the executive director, as I do believe that staff, including the commission's attorney, interfered (perhaps unlawfully) with a constitutionally protected right, a right guaranteed by the Coastal Act."
That seemed to say it all, yet no one was listening.
What could have been a huge environmental loss took an unexpected turn when Nick Franco of State Parks refused to grant the ACE a right of entry permit. I was there at the meeting of the State Parks Commission when he stated, simply but importantly, "No CEQA, no right of entry." The State Park commissioners were 100% behind him. In fact, one commissioner's jaw dropped, and she remarked, "You mean they thought they could go out on that state beach without CEQA?"
Yeah. Amazing, isn't it? That's what we thought.
Another crucial puzzle piece fell into place at that meeting. The waters off that section of Cambria coast were declared California's first marine park. We were elated, yet did not know how crucial to the story that decision would later become.
The CCSD was not pleased. In fact, director Muril Clift drew a line in the sand at the next CCSD meeting, blustering that they (State Parks) are "no friend," and that we should consider that in all of our dealings with them. His short speech [see video below] speaks volumes to the CCSD's stance on environmental laws, which it seems to regard as little tricks up the sleeves of its enemies. It also seems wrong to brand someone an enemy for not giving you what you want, especially when they've determined that what you want is not procedurally legal and correct. But I guess that's another rant for another day.
Questionably, in my (and many other peoples') opinion, County Parks granted right of entry. The ACE rolled onto the beach in front of Shamel Park  . . .  and promptly hit bedrock at 24 feet(75-foot channels had been predicted there). Eyes turned back to the sensitive lagoon area of the state park beach. This part of the story gets really interesting and . . . dare I say . . . funny.
State Parks managed to prove that the area was a protected natural preserve. (Then-president of the CCSD, Greg Sanders, had insisted on referring to it as "the so-called natural preserve.") It was protected all the way down to the mean high tide line. And no motor vehicles are allowed in a natural preserve.
Here's where it gets funny (except for the level at which it's too disrespectful to be funny). A plan was devised for Amish work horses to be trailered in. To pull a drill rig onto the sand on a type of sled. Know how you can tell I'm not making this stuff up? Because you can't make up stuff like that, that's how. I'm a fiction writer, and even I couldn't have made that up.
Word had it that someone with State Parks in Sacramento was considering going over Nick Franco's head. But when the CCSD/ACE came up with the idea to hover over the beach with a helicopter and lower a drill rig, patience seemed to run out in the state capital as well.
Did it ever occur to anyone on the pro side of this project that drill rigs are motorized, and do far more harm than the tires of a pickup truck? And that maybe Amish work horses pulling a sled weren't listed as prohibited only because no one had the imagination to envision that such a threat even existed?
But back to my story.
So the CCSD gave up. Right? You don't know the CCSD very well.
The CCSD and the ACE came back with a plan to drill below the mean high tide line. Which put it in our new marine park. Where it doesn't appear legal to try to place any sort of wells or desal intake/outfall systems.
Undeterred, the CCSD — oops, I'm sorry, I mean the ACE (I keep forgetting whose project this is) — headed off for a brand spanking new Coastal Commission consistency determination.  They had scaled the project down considerably. On the one hand, it could be argued that this made the investigation slightly less harmful. It also raised the argument that the investigation might now be quite useless.

[Note: This is an admittedly brief history of a very complex situation. It may be hard to do it justice in so few words. I hope if you're interested you'll go out to the Cambria Water Watch website - Cambria Water Watch - and read up on the background of this mess. The Water Watch site (disclaimer: I help maintain it) links its statements to source material. If it says there was a letter from Fish & Game, for example, it links to a PDF of the letter. The page entitled "More Information" is a particularly rich source of documentation.]

The consistency hearing was scheduled for December 9th. On December 8th, the ACE got together with Coastal Commission staff and lined out most of the stipulated protections. In retrospect, that might have been pushing the envelope.
The project was unanimously denied by the 11-member Coastal Commission.
But even better was the way it was denied. Not only did the commissioners (a couple of whom generally support desalination) call the site inappropriate, they suggested this was an end run around California environmental law.
Right. Exactly what all us "crazy" Cambrians have been saying since the play was run.
Commissioner Steve Blank asked, "Is this an end run around our process?" and "Isn't this just a way to take it out of our jurisdiction?" He suggested, "  . . .  raising red flags with our legal staff and thinking about what the issues are here, because I think they're bigger than—much bigger than—Cambria." Other commissioners said, "There's just no way around that this site — this beach, this creek mouth, is an environmentally sensitive area by any standard," and, "In my mind, there isn't a section of Chapter Three  [of the Coastal Act] this doesn't go against." And, "This project represents an avoidance of proper procedures." And, "The risks of the testing alone are substantial." And, "Page after page of conditions that are almost standard conditions in any action we take . . .  we want to make sure that the public is safe and the noise is diminished, and all of those were gone." And, "It really smells of going around the system."
It was a wonderful moment for the Cambrians who have been shouting these same words for several years now and feeling as though no one cared to listen.
At the December CCSD meeting, district engineer Bob Gresens claimed there had been some confusion among the commissioners, and some kind of disconnect of logic in their decision. I think it goes without saying that the logic involved in this story disconnects somewhere, but I don't agree that the problem took place at the Coastal Commission level.
But don't take my word for it. Complete video of the commissioners' comments are available on the home page of Cambria Water Watch. Watch and listen, and decide for yourself if the commissioners seem confused or if they seem to have an excellent grasp of what's really going on.

Cambria Environmentalist Mickie Burton sent this Christmas card to those who
had worked to protect this beautiful and important piece of coastline. (Photo by Joe Johnston)

The animals rejoice. And so do we, on their behalf. At least for the time being.

Porpoises return to San Francisco Bay

Like the elephant seals to Piedras Blancas, porpoises are recovering and returning to San Francisco Bay. NPR reports:

Something that has been missing from San Francisco Bay since World War II appears to be making a comeback: Harbor porpoises are showing up in growing numbers, and researchers are trying to understand why they're returning.
The walkway across the Golden Gate Bridge is almost always packed with people taking photos. But Bill Keener isn't here for snapshots of the stunning views. He's aiming his massive telephoto lens at a dark shape in the water 200 feet below.
"There's a porpoise right there, coming very, very close," he says. "Here's a mother and calf coming straight at us." Keener is with Golden Gate Cetacean Research, a nonprofit group focused on studying local porpoises, whales and dolphins.
Harbor porpoises have dark gray backs, and they're about 5 feet long — smaller than most of their dolphin relatives. Keener spots one turned on its side and spinning.

The porpoises, feeding in the middle of a busy shipping lane, spin as they go after schools of herring and anchovies. Seeing this behavior is huge for Keener because harbor porpoises are notoriously shy in the open ocean. But the fact that they're here at all is what's most remarkable.

Keener and his colleagues have identified 250 porpoises with their photos by looking for unique scars on the animals. When the team first started working on the bridge, the patrol officers took notice.
"We're staring down at the water for hours," Keener says. "They start getting worried about us. But they know us now; they know what we're doing."

Enlarge Lauren Sommer/KQED Bill Keener (left) and Jonathan Stern search for porpoises under the Golden Gate Bridge. Water quality has dramatically improved since the 1970s, which may be bringing the porpoises back.

Porpoises In Decline

The big question, though, is why harbor porpoises disappeared in the first place. Keener says the bay has always been porpoise habitat. Sightings were common until the 1930s.
"We don't really have reports from around World War II, and there were a lot of things going on during World War II that could have caused [the decline]," he says.

San Francisco Bay became a wartime port. It was a major ship-building center. One newsreel reported that 14 warships at one time sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge. And the Navy strung a seven-mile-long net underwater across the opening of the bay to keep out Japanese submarines. Hundreds of mines were planted in the waters outside the Golden Gate.
Keener says all of this certainly would have disturbed the porpoises. But there's a bigger change that may have driven them away: water quality.

The bay waters today are a far cry from those of the 1950s and '60s. As the region boomed, so did water pollution. Keener says raw sewage used to flow right into the bay.
"I remember coming across the Bay Bridge when I was very young, and it would just smell," Keener says. "It would stink."

William Keener/Golden Gate Cetacean Research A group of harbor porpoises in San Francisco Bay, photographed from the Golden Gate Bridge. Harbor porpoises haven't been seen in the bay since the 1930s. Researchers believe World War II activity may have contributed to their disappearance. The Navy strung a seven-mile underwater net across the mouth of the bay to keep out enemy submarines.

Rediscovering The Bay
After the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, the bay's water quality began to improve. But it took time for the food web to come back. San Francisco State University whale researcher Jonathan Stern says maybe the porpoises had to rediscover the bay.

"Over 60 years, we're talking about a number of generations of porpoises," Stern says. "So it's quite likely that San Francisco Bay as a habitat was out of the institutional memory."
Stern and Keener glide over the bay waters in a 22-foot boat, slowing down as they pass under the bridge.
"There's porpoises between us and the south tower at 200 yards," Stern says. Keener and Stern have a special permit to approach the porpoises. They wait, listening for them to surface.
"I just heard one here," Keener says. "Here's a cow-calf pair close to the boat, and we'll hear this puff. The old-time sailors used to call them puffing pigs. That's the exhalation."
The porpoises seem calm around boats in the bay, which Stern says will let researchers study their life cycle and social structure.
"It's one of those very few good-news environmental stories. And it's in our backyard. It gives one hope," Stern says.
It also gives researchers a chance to study how porpoises will react to the America's Cup race, which comes to the Bay Area in two years.

Whale songs

Welcome to the Whale Song Project!

You can help marine researchers understand what whales are saying. Listen to the large sound and find the small one that matches it best. NPR reports on then project and how it works.

Marine biologists are turning to citizen scientists, sitting at home in front of their computers, to help unlock the secrets of whale songs.

In Pixar's aquatic adventure Finding Nemo, Dory, voiced by Ellen DeGeneres, attempts to communicate with a whale to find the missing title character. She speaks in a loud, slow drawl to the whale, but when that fails, she says, "Maybe a different dialect."

"We actually know that killer whales do use dialects," marine biologist Peter Tyack tells Weekend Edition host Audie Cornish. Despite the tongue-in-cheek depiction of whale songs, Tyack says the film got it right.

"We don't know what the sounds mean, but each killer whale family has its own set of calls, like a dialect in human language," he says.

Tyack, a marine biologist at the University of St. Andrews, is also a coordinator of Whale FM, a new online experiment that's recruiting citizen scientists to study killer and pilot whale calls from around the world.

"The experiment is the first step in understanding how these whales communicate," he says. "The first thing we need to know is how to categorize their calls."

His research team needs help to sort through almost 15,000 different sound recordings and group similar ones together. That's where you, the citizen scientist, come in.

Tyack's team is counting on whale-song lovers to log on to Whale FM and listen to sounds of various whales calling to each other.

Tyack says much about whale communication remains a mystery for scientists, and he hopes crowdsourcing this new study may lead to some answers.

"We share a mammalian hearing system with killer whales and we think that lots of people, just using their own ears, should be able to make good matches of these calls," he says. "And the more people who decide, the better sense we get of how reliable their judgments are."

In the end, Tyack says, one of the major parts of the crowdsourcing concept of the project is to promote the fact that anyone can take part in science.