Wayward Whales: Hoping for Best, Prepared for Worst
The effort to save two wayward humpback whales is growing more expensive.
May 29, 2007 — -- The whole world is watching as a mother humpback whale and her calf, off course in California's Sacramento River, struggle to reach the safety of the open ocean.
And not surprisingly, it seems the whole world is behind the endangered animals, nicknamed Delta and Dawn.
But as federal, state and local agencies, assisted by an army of scientists and volunteers, dig deeper into an increasingly expensive bag of rescue ideas, they are also prepared for the scientific reality that the whales may not be saved.
"If things take a turn for the worse, there is absolutely a whole system in place," Trevor Spradlin, a marine biologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, told ABC News Tuesday from the site of the rescue effort.
There is also the issue of the rescue effort's costs, a burden shouldered largely by taxpayers. Spradlin said that in an emergency rescue situation it's impossible to give an accurate cost estimate of the effort -- but every day the whales spend in the river's freshwater means more taxpayer money spent on necessities ranging from fuel for the ships following the whales to the costs incurred by the scores of volunteers tracking their progress.
"We're just kind of doing stuff," Spradlin said, acknowledging that the effort's price tag is a question he continuously fields. "It's going to take some serious calculations to figure that out."
The effort has thus far included contributions from NOAA, the California Department of Fish and Game, the U.S. Coast Guard, the California governor's Office of Emergency Services as well as local fire departments.
Ken Balcomb, founder of the Center for Whale Research in Washington state, said he's seen the cost issue play out before -- and speculated that the effort, however it ends, will ultimately be a very expensive one.
"Everybody that's involved in this will count up all the paper clips they used and the hours spent and it will sound like a very expensive operation," he said. "That's why we have agencies like this in place."
Dr. Frances Gulland, chief of veterinary science at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, Calif., is one of the leaders of the rescue effort and is a specialist in whale necropsies -- a scientific procedure that typically occurs when marine mammals are discovered dead.
Spradlin said a necropsy, which like a human autopsy could provide researchers insight into why the animals died, could be a silver lining were the rescue effort to fail.
"In the event they come across animals that are dead," Spradlin explained, "they will do a thorough and detailed necropsy and take samples to analyze what the cause of a fatality might be."
Rescuers have not entertained the possibility of euthanasia, Spradlin said, because the effort is not yet without hope. But if it becomes clear that the welfare of Delta and Dawn can no longer be preserved, it is an option they will be forced to consider.
Tuesday's effort began with the whales making progress in the right direction, but still about 35 miles from the San Francisco Bay.
Rescuers are watching their behavior closely. Over the weekend, veterinarians shot the whales with syringes to administer antibiotics as a defense against infections that threaten the whales as they continue to live in freshwater. In the world of whale rescues, the technique was a first.
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