The event is cosponsored by BLUE Oceans Film Festival & Conservation Summit, as well as Monterey Academy of Oceanographic Sciences (MAOS).

The idea of a Whalefest began more than a decade ago as a multi-week festival in Monterey, involving a collaboration of 16 different cultural, arts and marine conservation institutions in the area.

In 2011, Whalefest Monterey was rejuvenated as a one-day event that was timed to hit the midwinter migration of gray whales as they pass Monterey Bay on their way to breeding lagoons in Baja California, Mexico.

The event was met with great community success as far as raising funds for marine nonprofits that do work in the Monterey Bay area, as well as raising community awareness for ocean conservation issues.

For more information on the festival and activities

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It is of course quite natural for people to want to help, but without proper leadership they often do the wrong thing. For example, people instinctively want to push the mammals back into the water, but they come straight back in – spreading the rescue attempt over a wider area. The whales breathe air while lying on the beach, says Rice,  and it’s important for them to be kept calm until the authorities arrive. “The public were trying their best, but it is not always the best for the whales.”

Mike Meyer of MCM said shooting the whales, a decision taken with the SPCA and the Mammal Research Institute, was a last resort. As the whales were not designed to support their body weight, their mass out of water constricted blood vessels and damaged organs.

Meredith Thornton, a scientist at the Mammal Research Institute, said no one knew for sure why whales beached. “False killer whales are highly social and the dominant whale could have something wrong and come ashore and the others follow. Or the leader could have a navigational error.”

They managed to get more than 20 of the whales back into the water, but some beached again further along the coast.  Rescuers had kept the beached adults and calves wet and also used earth-moving equipment to try to save them, but many were pushed back ashore by the high waves. Plans to transport the whales by road to the nearby deep-water naval base in Simons Town were shelved when it was decided that their health had deteriorated too much.

As the survivors were becoming increasingly stressed – 10 more had died – the decision was made to kill them to prevent further suffering.  The most humane way to perform euthanasia on whales is to shoot them through the brain, but the effect of witnessing this was horrific for onlookers.   There were even some scuffles between volunteers and officials.

Nan Rice, head of the Dolphin Action and Protection Group, said: “I feel quite sad, but it is the right thing to do.”

Scientists aim to call on the assistance of international colleagues in order to determine the cause of the tragedy.

Photos of the traumatic rescue attempt can be found at www.news24.com
You’ll find more pleasant news and information on whales at hermanuswhales.com

Fifteen of the world’s largest creatures have visited the waters off British Columbia and Alaska since 1997, and four of them were individuals also photographed in Californian waters.

Whalers formerly caught hundreds of blue whales in the northern zones, landing 1300 between 1908 and 1965. Yet despite the ban, they seemed not to recover there, suggesting to some researchers that the cultural knowledge of the area had been lost.

By contrast, large numbers of blue whales began collecting off California in the 1970s. Since the 1990s, though, their numbers have begun dwindling off California – the increased sightings to the north suggest they may be migrating there instead.

More here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17118-migrating-blue-whales-rediscover-forgotten-waters.html

Steve Golin and Michael Sugar are producing for Anonymous Content.

The script tells the story of three California gray whales who were found trapped under the ice of the Arctic Circle in October 1988. The subsequent rescue attempt became a huge global event, as scores of journalists converged on the nearby Eskimo town of Barrow, Alaska, and the U.S. and Soviet government enjoyed a rare moment of collaboration.

The two-week drama played out at a time of geopolitical change, with Mikhail Gorbachev in the midst of his glasnost initiative and Ronald Reagan preparing to leave office after his second term. In addition to the rescue attempt, Amiel and Begler’s script centers on a love story between a nonprofit aid worker and a journalist.

The project is said to be a high priority for Warners, which hopes to turn it into a big family film. Environmental stories and causes are close to the heart of Warners topper Alan Horn, who sits on the board member on the National Resources Defense Council. Jon Berg and Jesse Ehrman are overseeing for the studio.

Whales were spotted off Cape Byron in northern New South Wales just over a week ago. Whale researcher Wally Franklin says the humpbacks will head past Fraser Island, in south-east Queensland, in the next week.

He says the population has slowly increased since whaling ended almost 50 years ago.

“They’re up to about 10,000 now in number but to put that in perspective recent modelling clearly shows that the size of this group prior to that last period of whaling was somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 humpback whales, so they still have a very long way to go,” he said.

“Because of the increased numbers the flow’s just steady. Once it starts you just get a steady flow northbound during later May, June and July and then of course in late July they begin coming into Hervey Bay heading south and they keep moving south during August, September and October, so it’s very steady stream of whales once the flow begins.”

COFFS Coast whale watchers will be delighted to learn the annual northern migration of humpback whales has started, with the first sightings reported off the North Coast last week.

The migration to breeding grounds in Queensland normally begins around this time of year.

“About this time we begin to see one or two whales and now we are into May the flow will start to pick up,” said Wally Franklin, a researcher with Southern Cross University’s Whale Research Centre.

The peak of the northward migration occurs in June and July, but there is evidence the timing of the migration can vary between years.

Mr Franklin said humpback whales leave the feeding grounds in Antarctica to head north to the warmer waters of the Great Barrier Reef to breed and give birth.

They spend some months off the north-east coast of Australia before heading south again.

“The flow is a steady procession that runs northward through May, June and July and in late July some whales begin moving south again,” said Mr Franklin.

“All the mating actually takes place off the Queensland coast. That’s where calves are conceived and usually born. In the most fundamental way, that is their home.”

While the East Coast humpback whale population is now estimated to be around 11,000, Mr Franklin said it was still far from being fully recovered.

For more information visit www.scu.edu.au/whales or www.oceania.org.au