Watch: Humpback whale seen swimming in the Sacramento River near Rio Vista
RIO VISTA, Calif. —
A humpback whale was captured on video breaching in the Sacramento River near Rio Vista on Wednesday.
Denny Glover said he was fishing with two other people south of the Rio Vista bridge when one member of the group saw a whale just before 12:30 p.m.
The other two members of the group “thought maybe he hadn’t gotten enough sleep. But sure enough it breached again and we were able to get videos,” he wrote.
The Marine Mammal Center confirmed the sighting in a message to KCRA 3, saying the humpback was an adult who entered the San Francisco Bay earlier this week and then continued traveling into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
The whale is known via the Cascadia Research Collective’s photo-ID public catalog as CRC-11620. It’s been documented 15 times over the past 24 years while swimming off the coast of California and Mexico.
Its path since being spotted in the Bay on Sept. 15 included:
–Being spotted near the Richmond ship channel
–Traveling north past the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge
–Being reported farther east in the Carquinez Strait near Benicia.
On Wednesday morning, the U.S. Coast Guard spotted it further up the Delta, the Marine Mammal Center said.
No sightings have been reported on Thursday.
“While it’s unknown whether this whale is just passing through or if there is an underlying, unknown ailment, the best thing people can do is experience this adult whale’s presence from a respectful distance,” Kathi George, Director of Cetacean Conservation Biology at The Marine Mammal Center, said in a statement. “This whale is in an out of normal habitat area. Our team is actively monitoring the situation, and we kindly ask the public to please avoid changing the whale’s course and let the animal decide where it wants to go. ”
It’s not the first time a whale has been spotted in the Delta.
In 1985, a whale named Humphrey spent several weeks in the Rio Vista area before returning to the ocean.
In 2007, two humpback whales, a mother named Delta and a calf called Dawn, were spotted swimming near Rio Vista.
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They spent 20 days before returning to the ocean.
The Marine Mammal Center said CRC-11620’s was first seen off California in 2002 and until this week was last seen in Baja California in February.
The center urges people to keep their distance from the whale.
LiveCopter 3 is looking to see if the whale is still on the Delta. Watch below.
LIVE | LiveCopter 3 is searching for a whale that was spotted in the DeltaWatch on
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