Looking for Whales

Celebrate Whale Festival 2012

Week 1, Saturday & Sunday March 3-4, 2012

Week 2, Saturday & Sunday March 17-18, 2012

Plan to Celebrate Whale Festival 2012 at the Point Cabrillo Light Station from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day. In addition to a grandstand view of the annual Gray whale migration, visitors can see tide pool organisms without getting their feet wet by visiting the 250 gallon salt water aquarium at the Marine Science Education exhibit in the restored Blacksmith shop. Point Cabrillo Lightkeepers Association (PCLK) volunteer docents will help visitors spot whales, and illuminate Light Station history and local culture with presentations near the Lighthouse. A period museum showing how Lightkeepers and their families lived in the 1930’s will be open in the restored First Assistant Lightkeeper’s Residence.

Activities for children and families will include a life-size gray whale jigsaw puzzle as well as games led by PCLK’s Education staff. The Mendocino Coast Audubon Society will have a photo show of local birds in their booth and offer beginning bird identification walks at 9am each day of Whale Festival. The Marine Mammal Center volunteers will be on hand with fun marine mammal biofacts and specimens to share with young and old.

The Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla 87, our local lightkeepers, and PCLK Volunteers will offer lens tours on Saturday March 3rd, Sunday March 4th,  and again on Saturday March 17th and Sunday March 18th. 

Weather permitting, Docents will lead walks to nearby Frolic Cove and relate the story of the Boston Owned Clipper Ship “Frolic”, wrecked off the cove in July 1850, bound from China to San Francisco with a valuable cargo of Chinese merchandise for the Gold Rush miners and their families.

The lighthouse gift shop will be open with original artwork, fascinating books, and unique gifts. Hot drinks and cookies will be available for sale in the lighthouse lobby. Lunch will be available for purchase each day.

About the Gray Whales

Every spring, Gray whales journey with their newborn calves from the protected lagoons of western Baja to their ancestral feeding grounds in the cold waters of the Bering and Chukchi Seas.  The whales migrating past Point Cabrillo belong to the Eastern Pacific Gray Whale population of roughly 17,000 to 23,000 individuals. These figures vary year to year, but represent a recovery of the population since Grays were declared a depleted and endangered species in 1946.  Though Grays are no longer on the Unites States Endangered Species list, the International Whaling Commission protects them as a “sustained management stock”, allowing some annual hunting by subsistence and indigenous peoples. The Eastern Pacific Gray whales pass by Point Cabrillo twice, first on their southward journey from December to February, and again going north between February and May. Newly pregnant females usually lead the northward migration, followed by males, and the last to leave Baja are usually females with new born calves.

New research on the Eastern Pacific Gray whale shows that climate change is affecting the timing of the southward migration, the distance Gray whales travel, their diet and feeding areas and calf survival rate. Some scientists are concerned that the population is once again in decline.

For additional information please call the Point Cabrillo Lighthouse, 707 937-6122, or email info@pointcabrillo.org