This article reports on the two humpback whales, apparently mother and calf, which swam into the San Francisco Bay and then up the river toward Sacramento. They got nearly 90 miles inland.
The mother, for sure, and perhaps the calf as well have wounds on their backs, probably from boat propellers. It appears that they now may have started heading back toward the sea.
One big question is why they have gone so far off-course in their annual Pacific Coast migration toward summer in the Arctic? I have a theory. You know the old saying "put salt in the wound," meaning make it hurt worse? I wonder if salty seawater hurt in their wounds, whereas fresh river water felt good, or at least hurt less. I believe that is how a human would experience salt vs. fresh water in a wound, and whales are of course warm-blooded mammals like us.
Perhaps their wounds are healing and so, experiencing less discomfort, they are headed back to the ocean to go on north to the feeding grounds off Alaska and Siberia. I wish them well: fair winds and following seas.
