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 Travel & Outdoors | March 2008 
Mammals Make Economic Splash
 Terry Rodgers - San Diego Union-Tribune
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Gray whales' annual migration between Alaska and Baja gives boost to eco-tourism here and elsewhere along coast.
Ocean fishing guide Jim Sammons was paddling his kayak off La Jolla last winter when a newborn gray whale unexpectedly popped up a few feet off his bow.
“It was very intimidating,” he recalled.
While Sammons scrambled to retreat, the infant's 40-foot-long mother breached the surface to inspect the human intruder. Her spout shot up like a geyser.
“I could feel her mighty breath go right through my boat,” Sammons said. “She was so close I could have reached out and touched her.”
Unlike Sammons, most whale watchers rarely come closer than 100 yards, the minimum separation recommended by the National Marine Fisheries Service. But even from the span of a football field, seeing a whale is a thrill few nature lovers forget.
About 20,000 Pacific gray whales travel from Alaska to their mating and calving lagoons along southern Baja California during a four-month migration that typically starts in late September or early October.
They make the return trip around March with their newborns, completing a round-trip voyage of roughly 12,500 miles. By April, most will have passed by San Diego County on their northward route.
Commercial hunting of gray whales was banned in 1949. Since then, the marine mammals have become prized quarry for the growing eco-tourism business.
“Whale watching” was what San Diegans called it when the first coastal excursions began here in 1955, spawning a worldwide industry, said Eric Hoyt of Scotland, a researcher who writes about marine life.
Today, Hoyt said, tours targeting various whale species across the globe attract more than 9 million people from 87 countries. They generate more than $1 billion in revenue.
“Whale watching provides an alternative to destructive commercial fishing practices for countless fishermen and indigenous groups worldwide,” said Serge Dedina of Imperial Beach, author of “Saving the Gray Whale.”
“It is now more profitable to observe whales and other marine wildlife than to kill them.”
Concessions based in the United States transport about half of the worldwide passengers. Along the West Coast, more than 2 million people from Seattle to San Diego experience the thrill of whale watching from guided boat tours between November and May.
About 100,000 people opt for the intimate experience of following the gray whales to their calving and mating lagoons in southern Baja.
“I like to bring the students out on a sport-fishing boat like this because you get closer to the whales,” Mike Wake, a sixth-grade teacher at Hillsdale Middle School in El Cajon, said during a recent outing off San Diego aboard the vessel Producer.
“It's a great place to chat with others, and the kids really get excited when they can get up close to the rail and see the whales. It's a very impressive sight for them,” said Wake, who has led students on ocean trips since 1975.
An industry emerges
In the 19th century, numerous gray whales stopped in San Diego Bay during their annual migration. But the welcome mat was withdrawn in 1858, when a whaling station was established at Ballast Point to render oil from the marine mammals caught off San Diego and Baja.
On average, mariners killed nearly 300 whales during each migration season. The number tapered off steadily – along with the whale's dwindling population – until the station ceased operations in 1886.
The first organized whale census anywhere was started in the mid-1940s by professor Carl Hubbs of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. He hired students to count migrating gray whales.
By the time the International Whaling Commission stepped in to protect gray whales nearly 60 years ago, their numbers were down to a few hundred because of overhunting.
Soon, the world's first commercial whale-watching industry sprang up in 1955, when charter fishing operators based in San Diego Bay began offering sightseeing trips by boat, Hoyt said.
Passengers were charged $1 for the excursions, flippantly advertised as “whale hunts.”
Whale watching evolved into true eco-tourism in the late 1960s, when San Diego-based fishing charters offered the first long-range boat trips south of the border. Dedina said the whale-watching industry in Mexico, which is largely based in southern Baja, generates about $25 million per year.
Most of the whale watching in Baja California Sur occurs at three lagoons: 450 miles south of the border at Laguna Ojo de Liebre, formerly called Scammons Lagoon; 560 miles south of the border at San Ignacio Lagoon; and 750 miles south of the border at Magdalena Bay.
Fly-down trips that include van transportation to the lagoons run about $2,100. The cost is the same for an 11-day boat trip that hopscotches down the Baja coast from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas.
Whale watching in Baja provides a crucial source of income for almost 3,000 Mexican fishermen and their families, said Dedina, who is also the executive director of the nonprofit environmental group Wildcoast. The organization, based in Imperial Beach, encourages Baja fishermen to practice sustainable fishing or enter the eco-tourism business.
“Whale watching has been the most significant economic development that has made those communities sustainable,” Dedina said. “It gives the ocean a break from fishing for four months and it builds conservation awareness among the locals.”
Many options locally
The economics of whale watching are similar for California, except the audience is larger and the boat trips are cheaper.
More than 75 whale-watching boats carry 750,000 passengers and generate $20 million in revenue annually in the Golden State, according to a 2006 study by University of California Los Angeles economist Linwood Pendleton.
Whale-watching trips off Southern California typically range from three to five hours, and they cost $30 to $75. Sightseers have various options, from sailboat and kayak excursions to the science-oriented tours offered jointly by Hornblower Cruises and the San Diego Natural History Museum.
The University of California San Diego's Birch Aquarium also offers a research-focused whale-watching experience. Its boat tours, conducted in partnership with San Diego Harbor Excursion, operate twice daily from San Diego Bay during the migration period for gray whales.
Whale-watching excursions sponsored by the aquarium have experienced steady growth – a rise of more than 3,000 passengers over the past three years. During the 2006-07 cycle, they generated 26,000 passengers and $500,000 in gross revenue, said Birch marketing director Lydia Cobb.
Encountering whales in the wild hasn't lost its allure for Nigella Hillgarth, a former field biologist who has observed different species around the world at least two dozen times.
“Seeing a marine mammal coming out of the water that's nearly 50 feet long is amazing. You don't get tired of that,” said Hillgarth, a former penguin researcher who today oversees the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla.
The visceral experience is one that Hillgarth doubts can be duplicated at a zoo or theme park.
“It's not a tamed thing. You have this huge giant letting you be there and letting you experience its world very briefly,” Hillgarth said. “It's a very intimate connection with nature that we are lucky enough to have just outside our doorstep of San Diego Bay.”
Aside from being a boon to eco-tourism, whale watching helps Southern California's charter fishing industry stay afloat when the fishing action experiences a wintertime lull.
It became an important fallback for the region's fishing charters in 2003, when the state imposed severe restrictions on the winter rockfish season.
A fleet of 175 charter boats berthed at marinas from Santa Barbara to San Diego carry 750,000 passengers annually on fishing, diving and natural history trips, including whale-watching excursions.
About a dozen passenger-certified charter boats based in San Diego County switch from sport fishing to whale-watching tours each winter.
“It's an opportunity to keep their crews busy and provide some cash flow,” said Catherine Miller of the San Diego Sport Fishing Council.
H & M Landing in San Diego Bay and Helgren's Sportfishing in Oceanside carry the majority of whale-watching passengers in San Diego County.
Jim O'Brien, a charter boat owner based in San Diego Bay, said whale watching accounts for about 10 percent of his annual gross revenue.
“If we didn't have it, would I be sunk? No. But it does allow me to keep the same crew employed through the winter,” O'Brien said. “They don't stray off and find another job.”
Staff continuity is important, he said, because workers keep sport-fishing customers coming back year after year by building long-term camaraderie with them.
During a recent excursion aboard the Producer, O'Brien's 65-foot fishing boat, galley cook Diane Conner said a day at sea has its charms – whether her customers are nature lovers or fishermen.
“We're fishing,” Conner joked. “We're just fishing for blubber.”
After reaching the kelp beds just offshore, the captain relied on the traditional whaler's cry to alert his 72 passengers that their quarry was in sight: “Thar she blows!”
Staff writer Ed Zieralski and Union-Tribune library researchers Denise Davidson and Erin Hobbs contributed to this report.
Terry Rodgers: terry.rodgers(at)uniontrib.com |
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