#whale-incident

#whale-incident

"They didn't even try to fly away. They just feebly made noise," a woman told the Santa Barbara Independent on Saturday after spotting over two dozen dead or dying cormorants near Goleta Beach. "A few were on their stomachs, wings spread [and] gasping for breath.... Heartbreaking."

Longnose spurdog sharks, locally known as kalb al-bahr, are sold on Libyan fish markets. Fishermen catch them even though they are carrying eggs, driven by economic necessity.

"Not only are acts like that illegal, but it's really harming a very important, like, a biodiversity hotspot that we have right out here," Brent Fish, an aquarist with Birch Aquarium, stated.

The crowd atop the Hermosa Beach Pier watched with bated breath as a local fisherman, stripped down to his underwear and armed with only a pair of scissors, waded into the water in an attempt to free a juvenile great white shark.

The vessel had been transporting automobiles from England to the United States. How exactly the fox got onto the ship remains unknown, but officials do not know at what point during the 14-day journey the fox was discovered.

A 39-year-old man was surfing near Big River Beach in Mendocino Headlands State Park when a shark bit him around 5 p.m., resulting in injuries to both of his legs. Three off-duty lifeguards surfing nearby were able to help the man before personnel from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office, Cal Fire, Mendocino Fire and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife reached the scene.

A whale's death offers a unique window and opportunity to study the animal up close and in this particular case, learn more about how this adult female gray whale may have been behaving in San Francisco Bay. We are hopeful that samples taken during the necropsy will shed some further light on the animal's death and help highlight the importance of keeping whales safe while they utilize this urban-wildlife habitat.

If you enter the amounts of different types of plastic that you clean up into the Wildlife Impact Calculator, it will tell you how many animal lives would have been at risk, had those items made their way into the ocean and been ingested.

Our team has been so dedicated working around the clock, over time, whatever it takes to continue monitoring this outbreak. It's a really hard, emotional thing to go through as undergraduate, graduate students and young scientists to watch the seals that you've gotten to know over the years get sick.

Mendocino County is throwing four different whale fests, on the four weekends of March, each in a separate coastal community. After that comes Monterey, in April, with its big annual celebration full of science and wharf fun.

Out of an abundance of caution, access is being paused to give wildlife space and allow for ongoing monitoring. The investigation involves scientists from UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis, along with California State Parks, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the California Department of Public Health, the California Marine Mammal Stranding Network, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and NOAA Fisheries.

For decades, whale watching has been a seasonal ritual along the Sonoma Coast, drawing locals to wind-swept bluffs, binoculars in hand. Now the pastime has earned national notice: Travel + Leisure has declared Sonoma County the best place in the country to see whales. In a story published Feb. 3, the magazine said there is "no better place" in the United States for whale watching than the stretch of coastline

It looked like the silvery blade of a knife. Peering through his goggles, diver Ted Judah had laid eyes on a deep-sea creature rarely encountered by humans. He and wife Linda were diving off McAbee Beach in Monterey County in late December when, near the surface, he spotted the undulating thing. It was some kind of ribbon fish, he wrote in a post on the Facebook group Monterey County Dive Reports. Kevin Lewand solved the mystery.

Maximo Macanas, a McKinleyville resident, was discovered by a local sport vessel on Tuesday, according to a Facebook post by the Del Norte County Sheriff's Office. He was pronounced dead by the county coroner's office on Tuesday afternoon. Macanas was fishing with a friend and his children at the Klamath River near 4351 Klamath Beach Road when he was swept away Saturday afternoon by what the Del Norte County Sheriff's Office described as a sneaker wave,

She looks really good for what I can see through the window,