Blue whales put on a show, but at their peril

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — One of Earth's largest creatures penetrates the surface amid a massive cloud of krill, its gaping mouth opening as if hinged, and devouring a huge swallow of chowder. The tiny red crustaceans don't stand a chance; they're gone in a whooshing gulp that leaves passengers aboard the Condor Express spellbound.

"This is unbelievable," says Ian Lloyd, 54, a visitor from London. "I read when I was a little boy that blue whales were virtually extinct and now, 40 years later, here they are."

Dozens of them.

Taking advantage of unusual ocean conditions, blue whales, along with gregarious humpbacks and even some fin whales have transformed the outer Santa Barbara Channel into a fantasyland for marine-mammal enthusiasts.

Sightings of the gigantic cetaceans are up because the krill patches they feed from, which are generally submerged, are often being found at or near the surface.

But what is a boon to watchers can also be of danger to the whales, particularly the larger blues, who are surfacing close to and even within shipping lanes that pass between the Channel Islands and the mainland.

"I always refer to it as putting your dog's dish in the middle of Highway 101," says Mat Curto, captain of the Condor Express, which runs from Santa Barbara's Sea Landing and is the only vessel making daily excursions to the outer channel. "If the food is in the middle of a major highway, eventually an accident's going to happen."

Known collisions involving blue whales — the smaller, quicker humpbacks are less vulnerable — occur at a rate of less than one per year, but scientists believe the number of actual ship strikes to be much higher. And because of present conditions, some fear a repeat of 2007, when krill occurred in the shipping lanes for weeks and at least four blue whales were struck and killed in the channel.

That episode rekindled debate over what might be done to reduce threats to the estimated 2,000 blue whales — of an overall global population of 10,000 — that feed off California each summer.

The largest concentration of blue whales, which can measure more than 90 feet and weigh as much as 150 tons, is often in the Santa Barbara Channel.

Jim Lecky, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries' Office of Protected Resources, says blue whales do not face imminent danger as a population and that their numbers are slowly increasing from year to year.

However, the Environmental Defense Center in Santa Barbara filed the notice against the National Marine Fisheries Service, which operates under the NOAA, claiming the agency had not fully implemented a blue-whale recovery plan finalized in 1998.

There are no immediate plans to alter shipping routes or implement speed restrictions. Ship crews are simply asked to voluntarily slow down when whales are known to be close to or inside the lanes.

"Do any of them slow down? No," Curto says.

The lanes and a separation zone between them would be costly to the shipping industry and there is no guarantee it would save whales.

John Calambokidis, founder of Cascadia Research in Olympia, Wash., has been identifying areas in which whales enter shipping lanes and using suction tags to study their behavior. One thing he has discovered is that the blue whales seem to be spending most of their time at night close to the surface, making them more vulnerable.

The scientist hopes to determine how whales react to approaching vessels; whether they can hear them and whether they take evasive action or surface in panic.