Thar she blows! The whales are back.Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard FLORENCE - The whales whales - like kicking dead whales down the beach arrived early along the Oregon Coast The Oregon Coast is a geographical term that is used to describe the coast of Oregon along the Pacific Ocean. Stretching 362 miles from Astoria to the California border, the Oregon Coast is unique in that the whole coastline is public land. this winter, but their presence has been hard to detect against the backdrop of this month's dreary drea·ry adj. drea·ri·er, drea·ri·est 1. Dismal; bleak. 2. Boring; dull: dreary tasks. weather. However, if the clouds stay high this week, there still will be plenty to spot, said Morris Grover, volunteer coordinator of the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department's whale watching Whale watching is the practice of observing whales and other cetaceans in their natural habitat. Whales are watched most commonly for recreation (cf. bird watching) but the activity can also be for scientific or educational reasons. program. "The big limitation is not the whales, it's the weather," Grover said. Today begins the official Winter Whale Watch Week, during which 250 volunteers staff 26 "Whale Watching Spoken Here" sites along the Oregon Coast. It's the peak week for the winter migration of the giant gray whales from the cold seas off Alaska to the warm waters of Mexico's Baja peninsula. During the winter, the whales breed in Mexico's lagoons, before heading back north in the spring for food. Experts say 30 whales pass each hour during the week. "They always seem to be in a hurry to get there," Grover said. Last year, nearly 18,000 people visited whale watching sites, spotting a total of 2,000 whales, most of them about a mile offshore. That means those heading for the coast to try their luck would do well to take binoculars binoculars Optical instrument for providing a magnified view of distant objects, consisting of two similar telescopes, one for each eye, mounted on a single frame. In most binoculars, each telescope has two prisms, which reinvert the inverted image provided by the eyepiece . For more information, visit www.whale spoken.org. Winston Ross can be reached at (541) 902-9030 or rgcoast@oregonfast.net. |
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