IT WAS a great disappearing act. The 2000 blue whales that feed off the
shores of California each summer are the largest surviving population of our
planet鈥檚 largest animal. But what happens to them when summer ends was anybody鈥檚
guess.
Bruce Mate of Oregon State University tagged around 100 whales during their
summer California stay and tracked them by satellite on their subsequent
southerly migration. 鈥淭his is the first year-round migration cycle recorded for
any whale,鈥� he says. Most of the whales spent the winter in the biologically
rich upwelling water off Costa Rica, he told the Ocean Sciences meeting in
Hawaii this week.