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Science

A whale-watching tour got to witness a gray whale giving birth right next to their boat

Even the expert crew said they'd never seen anything like it.

gray whale
Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

Whale watchers got to see a baby whale being born off the coast of Dana Point, California.

Seeing a whale in the wild can be a moving experience for many people. That's why thousands of people pay money to go on whale-watching excursions, hoping to catch a glimpse of the gentle, majestic, intelligent creatures in their natural habitat.

Lucky whale watchers get to catch much more than a glimpse, and some even see a whale breach up close. But very, very few ever get to see anything close to what a recent group of tourists on a whale-watching cruise off Dana Point, California, got to witness.

Boats are required by law to stay at least 100 yards away from whales, but if a whale approaches a boat when it's stopped, there's not a whole lot a captain can do. Starting up the engine would just disturb it, so the best thing to do is just enjoy the encounter.

In this case, when a gray whale swam near a Capt. Dave's Dana Point Dolphin & Whale Watching Safari tour boat, passengers and crew thought they might be witnessing something tragic. The whale was splashing about and was soon surrounded by blood in the water. Some speculated that maybe a shark or other predatory animal had attacked the whale.


As it turned out, they were witnessing the miracle of life—it was a mama giving birth to a baby gray whale.

Twitter user Jeremy Theisen shared a video of the event, and though it's difficult to see what happens, you can hear the people on the boat wondering what was happening before it became clear.

Capt. Dave's shared drone footage of the exciting moments after the birth as the calf learned to swim and the mama seemed to show off her newborn to those who witnessed the event.

"This is a first for all of us. We've never actually seen it happen," Capt. Gary Brighouse can be heard saying, according to WXXI News.

Captain Dave's shared in a statement on YouTube:

"After surfacing, the newborn calf began learning how to swim and bonding with its mother. The female even brought the calf over to the boats as if to show off her offspring and say hello.

Gray whales prefer to give birth in the warm and protected lagoons of Baja California, Mexico. The lagoons offer safety from predators such as orcas, as well as warm water for calves who have not yet built up a thick layer of blubber.

Although some gray whales do give birth in Baja, there are times when calves just won't wait and are born during the migration. Gray whales migrate annually along the U.S. west coast, swimming 10,000 to 12,000 miles round-trip. It is one of the longest migrations of any mammal. The whales travel from their feeding grounds in the Bering and Chukchi Seas near Alaska to the mating and birthing lagoons of Baja, and back again."

Alisa Schulman-Janiger runs the Los Angeles chapter of the American Cetacean Society's Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project, which tracks the migration patterns of whales along the coast. She told NPR that the footage of the birth and immediate aftermath was "astounding" and a windfall for researchers.

"The fact that you can see the blood pool means the calf must have just come out," she said. "That isn't something that is seen very often or documented often. In fact, I don't know if there's any other video footage of something like that."

Schulman-Janiger explained how the mama whale was holding the calf up so it could rest and breathe and that they exhibited typical bonding behavior. She said she wished she had been there, adding: "It's extraordinarily rare and really, really special for people to be able to share in those first few moments of a young whale's life. A whale could get to be 50, 60, 80 years old. And this is just the beginning of that calf life."

What an incredible thing to witness.

Community

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Coming out as part of the LGBTQ+ community is something that someone does on their own time in the way they feel most comfortable. It can take years for someone to build up the courage to do it, and some people never feel comfortable enough to share that part of themselves with the world. But no matter when or if someone comes out, their existence within and outside of the queer community is still valid.

And while many people respect that the decision to come out is deeply personal, not everyone does and Clements was on the receiving end of hateful behavior. According to LGBTQ Nation, Danny Pate wrote the letter outing Clements as gay and sent it to local pastors before the letter began circulating the community. This led to Clements handing in her resignation.

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David Rossler returns to the place where he hid from the Nazis during World War II.

David Rossler, 84, and his mother were taken in by Georges Bourlet and his four young adult children in 1944 and allowed to hide in their home in Brussels in the waning months of World War II. Rossler and his mother were Jewish, and Belgium was occupied by Nazi Germany. If caught, they’d be taken to a concentration camp.

Rossler had already lost his uncle and grandfather after they were taken to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland and he would lose his father, hiding elsewhere, to an illness.

Bourlet and his family were also in danger if they were caught hiding the mother and child from the Nazis. "People who protected Jews were simply risking their lives. You wouldn't end up in jail, but in Auschwitz—and Auschwitz, you didn't end up anywhere but in the crematoria," Rossler said in a video produced by MyHeritage.com.

After Allied forces liberated Belgium in 1945, Rossler, who was born Daniel Langa and later took the name of his stepfather, moved to Austria and lost touch with the Bourlets.

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For years, Lionel Rossler, David’s son, did everything he could to find the family, including putting ads in the paper and posting on social media. After one such post, he received a message from Marie Cappart, country manager for MyHeritage in Belgium, who wanted to help.

MyHeritage is an online genealogy platform with 90 million family trees. Rossler's story hit close to home with Cappart.

"My husband lost his grandfather during the war. He died at the concentration camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau," Cappart told Newsweek. "My own great-grandmother also died in the camp at Ravensbrück. She was British and was in Belgium as part of the resistance. Sadly she was caught by the Nazis and deported. She never came back."

“After browsing records and cross-referencing data, Cappart found an Anne-Marie Bourlet, born in Auderghem in 1929,” Lionel said, according to SWNS. “She discovered that Anne-Marie married someone with the surname Dedoncker and had five children—all of them possibly still alive.”

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Finally, after 75 years, David Rossler returned to the place where he hid in 1944 and 1945 and thanked Bourlet’s five grandchildren.

“It was an incredibly emotional day for us,” Lionel explained. “I was able to see, with my own eyes, the place where my father was kept safe from the Germans all those years ago.”

“If I had Mr. Bourlet in front of me, I would want to kiss him,” said David. “To say thank you with all my body, with all my life, I am alive, I have a family of which I am very, very, very proud. To tell him that my life is thanks to him.”

Bourlet didn’t know it then, but his bravery saved the lives of nine people.

“Because of his heroic action, Georges was able to save the lives of my father and grandmother,” Lionel said. “Nine people were saved thanks to what he did; my brother, myself and our children would not be here today if not for his courage and kindness.”

As a final “thank you” to Bourlet and his family, the Rosslers want him to be recognized as Righteous Among The Nations at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. This honor is for non-Jews who risked everything during the Holocaust to save Jewish people.

The medal given to honorees has an inscription with the Hebrew saying: "Whosoever saves a single life, saves an entire universe.”

Motherhood

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Shortly after unwrapping it, Aurelia's mom pulls a teddy bear dressed in a t-shirt and little pants out of the box. Through excited confusion, she yells, "What is this?!" before Aurelia instructs her to press the paw on the bear.

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