Offshore showtime.

Byline: Greg Bolt The Register-Guard

DEPOE BAY - Whale watching isn't just for the cold and wet months anymore.

A week of summer whale watching kicks off today on the central Oregon Coast, even though most of the east Pacific gray whales are cooling their fins in the Bering Sea. A few dozen, though, take up temporary summer residence off the coast and put on, well, a whale of a show.

This is just the second year the state parks department has offered a summer whale-watching week. What makes it worth doing is that the whales are much closer to shore than they are when they migrate north to Alaskan waters in spring and when they return to Baja, Mexico, in winter.

Morris Graves, manager of the Whale Watching Center in Depoe Bay, said that instead of a half-mile to more than a mile offshore, these whales get right up close to shore, especially the younger ones.

"We've actually seen them so close that you can see the spout but you can't see the whale," Graves said. "You have to crawl out on your hands and knees and look out over the rocks. They like to come up and rub against the rocks."

What brings the whales in is food. The usual upwelling of nutrient-rich waters came late this year, and whales that follow the food up the coast are stopping to feast on the critters that hang out in the kelp beds that line the shore.

Graves said there are 40 to 60 gray whales that regularly drop out of the spring migration to dawdle along the central coast to eat. Apparently, they figure food is food, whether it's off the Oregon's coast or Alaska's.

"Whales have two things to do, eat and look for something to eat," Graves said. "So they cruise from kelp bed to kelp bed and then move on."

Another thing that makes the summer whale visit a good show is the younger mammals, the ones Graves calls teenagers. Eating isn't enough for them; they also like to play.

"I've seen them right in front of the building completely clear the water, totally airborne," he said. "That's 80,000 pounds airborne. We don't see it as often as we'd like because it's not a common thing for adults. But we see the juveniles do it. They like to show off a bit."

As with the migratory whale-watching seasons, the state Parks and Recreation Department will have volunteers at special "Whale Watching Spoken Here" sites to help visitors spot cetaceans and offer information about their habits. But unlike the migrations, volunteers will only staff four of the 28 whale-watching sites from Southern Washington to Northern California.

Those are the four sites from Depoe Bay to Newport, which are Boiler Bay, the Depoe Bay seawall, Rocky Creek and Yaquina Head Lighthouse. Volunteers will be available between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. each day, today through Sept. 5.

Graves said that the program could be expanded to more sites in the future if enough volunteers can be rounded up to staff more locations and if enough people come to watch the show.