Вы находитесь на странице: 1из 1

Sacramento River and under the Rio Vista Bridge to a dead-end slough 69 miles (111 km) from

the ocean.Numerous attempts to coax him back to the ocean failed. One initial attempt
involved playing sounds of orcas to frighten Humphrey into leaving. Another attempt was
made using a "sound net" in which people in a flotilla of boats made unpleasant noises behind
the whale by banging on steel pipes, a Japanese fishing technique known as "oikomi." Several
weeks of being trapped in the fresh water of the Sacramento Delta brought signs of physical
stress in the whale. His skin was graying and he was becoming more and more listless. None of
the traditional herding techniques were working, and Humphrey appeared to be dying.
As a last-ditch effort to save the whale, Louis Herman, a researcher of humpback whales,
postulated that it would be possible to lure it out by playing acoustic recordings of whale
social and feeding sounds. Dr. Bernie Krause, an acoustician, offered the recordings he had
made of humpback whale feeding songs as a possible way to lure him out. However, to get the
sounds into the water required a powerful speaker and amplification system that only the
Navy was likely to have. Krause contacted Greg Pless who was in charge of the underwater
acoustics research laboratory for the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California,
where one of the few high-power J-11 underwater transducers existed in the country. Pless
and his colleague Dale Galarowicz quickly gained Navy permission and rushed the equipment
to Rio Vista where Humphrey was last seen.

Early the next morning, the equipment was loaded onto the private yacht, Boot Legger,
donated by its owner for the rescue effort. Directed to the location in the slough where
Humphrey was last seen, the speaker was lowered over the side of the boat, the sounds were
played, and Humphrey emerged from the water at the bow of the ship. The captain quickly
started down the river with Humphrey close in tow. With the assistance of numerous fish and
wildlife agencies, including the Army's 481'st Transportation Company (Heavy Boat), the crew
led him the many miles back down the Sacramento river, alternately playing and not playing
the whale songs to keep his interest. Large numbers of spectators lined the banks of the river.
As they approached the San Francisco Bay and the water gained in salinity, Humphrey became
visibly excited and began sounding. Though the crew lost sight of him that night, they picked
him back up in the morning and led him out through the Golden Gate bridge into the Pacific
Ocean on November 4, 1985, at 4:36 p.m. The town of Rio Vista later erected a granite marker
at the harbor commemorating the event.

=== 1990 ===

Humphrey stayed a considerable time in 1990 in the embayment immediately north of Sierra
Point in Brisbane, California where occupants of the Dakin Building could observe his antics.
Humphrey became beached on a mudflat in San Francisco Bay to the north of Sierra Point and
to the south of Candlestick Park. He was extricated from the mudflat with a large cargo net
and support from the Marine Mammal Center and a U.S. Coast Guard boat.
This time, he was successfully guided back to the Pacific Ocean using a combination of
"oikomi" simultaneously with the broadcast of attractive sounds of humpback whales
preparing to feed from a boat headed towards the open ocean. Researchers Louis Herman an

Вам также может понравиться