As gray whale mothers and calves journey up the West Coast toward summer feeding grounds it's becoming increasingly clear that this is a special season. As in baby boom!

The number of calves on their first-ever migration from Baja California nursing grounds to the Arctic has astonished whale watchers and landing operators, and represents a welcome sight for researchers hoping Pacific gray whales will rebound after several recent low-production years.

Gray whale calf greets admirers in a Baja California lagoon before its first-ever journey to Arctic feeding grounds. Credit: Diane Alps

"At this rate we just might exceed our record high of 222 cow/calf pairs by May 15," said Alisa Schulman-Janiger, director of the ACS-LA Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project at Point Vicente on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Through Tuesday, volunteer spotters at Point Vicente had logged 181 calf sightings, marking the third-highest count since the project began in 1984. The record was 222 was in 1997.

It's too early to predict whether this will be a record-setting year, but it will be one of the top calf-production years since spotting stations were established, beginning with the ACS-LA project.

The boom occurred most likely because of a meager Arctic ice cover last spring, which enabled pregnant females early access to important feeding areas. "In years that ice is slow to melt, primarily in April and May, pregnant females cant get to the feeding grounds," explained NOAA Fisheries biologist Wayne Perryman. "They're bumping up against this ice trying to get to feeding areas but they can't get far enough north. So when ice is slow to recede the odds of their pregnancies going to term are reduced."

Gray whale mothers and calves are still passing California and Oregon, trailing pregnant females, adult males and juveniles. Cow-calf pairs require more time to complete the 6,000-mile return migration and they generally hug the coastline, providing research stations with ideal vantage points.

At Point Piedras Blancas in Central California, Perryman, who leads NOAA's Cetacean Health and Life History Program, has reported single-day sightings of 28 cow-calf pairs on two days during the past week.

Twenty-eight is the most for one day since 2004, when 456 calves were counted by the end of what turned out to be the second-biggest production season since the program began in 1994. (501 calves were sighted in 1997.)

Through Tuesday, about halfway through the cow-calf peak migration period off Central California, Perryman's spotters had tallied 192 calves. They expect many more over the next couple of weeks.

"You want to be in the 300s at the end of the season -- those are good calf years," Perryman said.

Last year, spotters counted 255 calves. In 2010 and 2009 they counted only 71 and 86, respectively.

Pregnant females fast during the four-month round-trip migration, so they require steady nourishment from the moment they reach the Bering and Chukchi seas. Their diet consists of small crustaceans such as amphipods and tube worms, found in bottom sediments.

"When they get back up north they need to start putting on fat right away because next year they're going to have a calf and they're going to lactate and feed that calf while they're fasting again next year," Perryman said. "So if you're not a fat girl you're probably not going to make it."

The Pacific gray whale population numbers about 20,000. It has edged upward since devastating mortality events between 1998 and 2000, following poor feeding seasons. During that period the population dropped from about 28,000 to about to 18,000 whales.

Gray whales, which were once hunted to the brink of extinction, were removed from the endangered species list in 1994.

-- Top two images are courtesy of Diane Alps. Bottom two are courtesy of Searcher Natural History Tours

Fishing for sharks is one thing, but surfing on a shark carcass after its capture and posting videotape on Facebook is just begging for trouble. Nobody knows this better than three New Zealand anglers who have spent the past several days apologizing and defending themselves, while the incident remains under investigation by at least one government agency.

Image showing Eddie Bithell attempting to surf a dead thresher shark is via Facebook

The anglers had landed a large bigeye thresher shark after a marathon battle, and took the predator to port to be weighed. The next day they decided to tow the carcass to sea and "feed it to the food chain," Zane Wright, the boat owner, told the Bay of Plenty Times.

The trouble began when Eddie Bithell decided to surf on the shark as it was being towed, tail-first, behind Wright's boat, while Mark Collins captured the event on videotape.

When Collins posted the video to his Facebook page, without Bithell's permission and without including all of the details, the flood of criticism began. (The video has since been removed.)

Catherine Cassidy, an Auckland environmentalist, was pointed toward the video by a shark expert in Borneo, and expressed her disgust to local newspapers and the Ministry of Primary Industries.

Cassidy told the Times: "We see people working hard worldwide to establish shark sanctuaries, where every shark counts, and then we see acts like this from a so-called developed country. It is heartbreaking and offensive."

The anglers belong to the Tauranga Game Fishing Club. The Ministry for Primary Industries has confirmed it's investigating the incident.

Interestingly, Shark Diver, a shark ecotourism company, used the incident to point out the hypocrisy of criticism coming from New Zealand, which still allows the controversial practice of shark finning, or removing fins from captured sharks and tossing their bodies overboard.

"New Zealand is one of the few Western countries left on the planet that not only allows shark finning," Shark Diver states. "New Zealand is a main purveyor of legal shark fins to the Asian market."

As for the anglers, they're in damage-control mode.

Bithell: "I didn't realize everyone would have such an opinion about it. We were not trying to be disrespectful with dead animals."

Wright, who said he releases most sharks but this one had been hooked by the tail and drowned during the fight: "They think we've gone out to murder a shark and we've ridden it while it was alive and tortured it and that's completely not what's happened."

A Tauranga Game Fishing Club spokesman: "We do not wish to be involved."

Mark Connor, president of the New Zealand Sport Fishing Council, acknowledged that laws do not appear to have been broken but added: "We do not condone this type of behavior at all and we would be very disappointed if it was one of our members or someone associated with the club.... People like this can give us a bad name."

As for bigeye threshers, they're in reasonably good health from a population standpoint, according to Department of Conservation shark expert Clinton Duffy.

"I don't know about the wisdom of shark surfing but the shark itself is fairly common," he said.

In early April, Paul Basagoitia became the first freeride mountain biker to land a double backflip on natural terrain (as opposed to a steel ramp). Located near to the border of Utah and Arizona, Basagoitia worked alongside his sponsors to create the perfect set of jumps, which allowed him enough time in the air to pull the double backflip.

The achievement marks an important moment for freeride mountain biking progression. After multiple unsuccessful attempts, Basagoitia finally landed the trick that has eluded him for years. "It felt great when my wheels touched the ground because I don't think my body could have handled another hit," says Basagoitia. "It wasn't easy. I knocked myself out a couple times but I finally accomplished what I've been trying to do for years."



Fellow Red Bull teammate Travis Pastrana, who is credited with landing the first-ever double backflip on a motorcycle, understands what goes into landing a trick of this magnitude. "The double back flip isn't the most technical trick but it takes a lot of airtime and even more commitment," says Pastrana. "Once you leave the take-off, there is no turning back and no way to bail out. Paul has guts and it's great to see that he's pushing the limits."

At least three sailors competing in a race from Southern California to the Mexican port of Ensenada were killed early Saturday during an apparent collision between their 37-foot yacht and a much larger vessel.

The Aegean, one of 213 boats entered in the annual Newport-to-Ensenada yacht race, disappeared from the race online tracking system at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday.

On Saturday, a U.S. Coast Guard search turned up wreckage of the vessel and crews recovered three bodies near Mexico's Coronado Islands, which are just south of U.S. waters. The body of a fourth sailor remained missing.

This is the second deadly sailing competition this month off the West Coast. On April 14 five sailors were killed when stormy seas pitched their boat onto the rocks during a race around the Farallon Islands west of San Francisco.

There had been early speculation that an explosion aboard Aegean may have occurred, but based on the condition of the wreckage a collision seems more likely.

"It appeared the damage was not inflicted by an explosion but by a collision with a ship much larger than the 37-foot vessel," Rich Roberts, spokesman for the Newport Ocean Sailing Assn., said early Sunday.

The recovered bodies were delivered to the San Diego Medical Examiner. Two were identified as Joseph Lester Stewart, 64, and William Reed Johnson Jr., 57. The third was not identified pending notification of next of kin. Bill Fitzgerald, lead investigator for the Coast Guard, told race officials that none of the three had been wearing a life vest.

The 125-mile competition runs through shipping lanes and it's possible that a large freighter could have struck the sailboat without anyone on board noticing the collision. It's also possible that because winds were light, Aegean's crew might not have been able to elude a larger boat moving under power at high speed.

These are the first fatalities in the 65-year history of a race that runs from Newport Beach, in Orange County, to Ensenada. The race began Friday afternoon and many vessels pulled into the Baja California port on Saturday.

-- Image shows vessels at the start of the annual Newport-to-Ensenada race. Credit: Rich Roberts

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It turns out the so-called rare capture of a very large great white shark last week in the Sea of Cortez might not be so out of the ordinary. Erik Cutter, publisher of Baja Life magazine, recently returned from the Baja California town of Loreto with a photograph showing two Mexican fishermen posing with a massive set of jaws extracted from a giant shark two weeks ago, about 40 miles north of town.


The other catch (see image below) was made off the mainland coast near Guaymas.

Cutter owns a home in Loreto and is acquainted with locals and some commercial fishermen. The photograph, he said, was of a print photograph the fishermen had shared. They allowed Cutter to photograph the print if he promised to crop their faces.

Cutter was told that white sharks are being increasingly targeted for their jaws and fins, and that 13 large sharks have been killed during the past few weeks alone. "It's a relatively new thing for them," Cutter said.

Shark jaws are sold locally for about $1,500 per set, then re-sold by more entrepreneurial types for much steeper prices. A set of jaws like the one pictured above might garner $10,000 or more outside of Mexico.

This is an alarming development because white sharks are embattled and highly-protected in Mexico -- as in the U.S. -- and because portions of the Sea of Cortez are now recognized as important nursery areas for the species.

The capture off Guaymas was by commercial fishermen who claimed to have accidentally caught the behemoth in their nets.

Cutter said that fishermen north of Loreto intentionally target white sharks during the spring, when adult white sharks are presumed to be more common. They use baited hooks beneath air-filled barrels. Hooked white sharks eventually tire and drown before they're taken ashore.

In a news release Cutter stated, "Commercial fishing has become so difficult in the Sea of Cortez that several of the few remaining commercial fisherman are so desperate that they are now targeting the ocean's greatest predator, the Great White Shark.

"According to a very reliable source, at least thirteen mature Great Whites between 16 and 22 feet long, some estimated to weigh more than 2,200 pounds, [were] slaughtered for their fins and their jaws."

Much of the fishing is said to occur off Isla Ildefonso, an increasingly popular dive spot about 40 miles north of Loreto.

"The economic reasons are obvious, but certainly, they don't justify the indiscriminate and illegal killing of these amazing sharks," Cutter said. "I am very upset by this because I have worked for many years to educate local fisherman to protect their fishery, one that Jacques Cousteau once called, 'The Aquarium of the World.' "

This is somewhat surprising because Mexican scientists do not have many records of adult white shark captures in the gulf. Most involve specimens captured accidentally in nets. If commercial fishermen are now intentionally targeting white sharks, said renowned scientist Felipe Galvan-Magana, it could bode ominously for the species.

"I hope that Mexican authorities can do something to reduce this kind of fishing," the researcher said.

Because of the remoteness of the area, there is little enforcement. But if white sharks are being hunted at such a rate, at risk to the species and the marine ecosystem, perhaps authorities should investigate--and soon.

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