2 lost whales apparently find way back to ocean

SAN FRANCISCO -- More than two weeks after they were first spotted far up the Sacramento River, two lost humpback whales appeared to have finally found their way back to the ocean Wednesday.

The whales, believed to be a mother and calf, were last seen at sunset Tuesday less than 10 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge, after they traveled 25 miles southwest from another bridge. Officials said they assumed the pair returned to the open sea, undoing a wrong turn that had drawn thousands of onlookers and a flurry of rescue efforts.

To make sure the whales had not taken another wrong turn, two government boats were launched Wednesday morning to look for them in the Pacific Ocean, said Bernadette Fees, deputy director of the California Department of Fish and Game.

Rescuers planned to rely on reports from commercial vessels and Coast Guard patrols to determine if the humpbacks still were in the bay.

But as the afternoon wore on, officials grew increasingly confident that the humpbacks, which were injured by a boat's propeller during their two-week sojourn inland, had reached the ocean.

Marine scientists said Wednesday that although they will never know why the pair swam 90 miles inland, the massive operation to rescue them yielded valuable information about the endangered species.

It was the first time the same humpbacks were studied in the wild for so long, Fees said.

The information scientists gathered includes sound recordings, logs of the whales' behavior and tissue samples.