If you listen to reports about ships colliding with migrating whales off the coast, navigators would well be warned to be on the alert.\u00a0 The bulk of the 20,000 behemoths will be swimming by this month. These warnings were stirred when a fin whale\u2019s carcass washed ashore a few weeks ago in Point Loma, believed to have been the victim of a ship encounter. Meanwhile, smaller boats with curious sightseers will be on the waters off our coast getting a close-up view as these spectacular animals head for warm Mexican breeding lagoons. The whales will have completed a 12,000-mile journey from the Bering Sea \u2014 an annual odyssey that began in October. As to collisions, some say these are common occurrences off Southern California shores.\u00a0Collisions are likely noted here more often because of reports by the Navy. Coast Guard officials recently proposed altering shipping lanes for the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, in part to avoid prime whale habitat around the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. Officials from the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla say the whales end up right in the middle of the shipping lane. Researchers said the casualty count might be only 10 percent of the actual total because some whales sink quickly and others float out to sea undetected.\u00a0 Often longer than a bus and weighing 30 to 40 tons, gray whales move in large pods. The gray whale consumes bottom-dwelling crustaceans and krill by turning on its side and scooping up huge amounts of sediment from the sea floor.\u00a0 According to the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla, gray whales are most frequently seen off San Diego from late December through March. Grays are relatively slow swimmers, cruising at an average speed of three to five miles per hour.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u2022 How time flies<\/b> \u2014 Boxing champion Muhammad Ali celebrated his 70th birthday last month. I remember covering two of his West Coast fights as a boxing writer. We were ringside at what was then called the San Diego Sports Arena in 1973 when ex-Camp Pendleton Marine Ken Norton upset the “Great One”\u00a0 via split decision.\u00a0 He broke Ali\u2019s jaw in the process. Later, Norton went on to hold the world heavyweight title for a couple of months.\u00a0 \u2022 Just in case<\/b> \u2014 San Diego\u2019s Coast Guard says it\u2019s ready, should a cruise ship get into trouble off our coast. Hopefully, the Coast Guard is not having to prepare for a ship tragedy like the one off the west coast of Italy at Giglio Island. However, in November 2010 it helped take care of a problem when the cruise ship Splendor was crippled by a disabling fire south of San Diego. Since then, the Coast Guard said it has learned from the rescue experience. “Once a year, we meet with everybody, exercise it and then we debrief what worked, what didn\u2019t work, how can we do this better?” said Coast Guard Lt. Sean Groark. Rescuers say they have a plan and they practice for emergencies, but maintain that the ocean is dynamic and can be unpredictable. \u2014 Johnny McDonald is a longtime writer and columnist for the San Diego Community Newspaper Group. He can be reached at Johnny23@cox.net.<\/i><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you listen to reports about ships colliding with migrating whales off the coast, navigators would well be warned to be on the alert.\u00a0 The bulk of the 20,000 behemoths will be swimming by this month. These warnings were stirred when a fin whale\u2019s carcass washed ashore a few weeks ago in Point Loma, believed […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"TO THE POINT: Shipping lanes soon to be full of\u00a0whales","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11593,11552,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-297505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-no-images","category-opinion","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}