Pre-pandemic crowds return to Fort Bragg’s whale fest for races, beer and celebrating all things whale
FORT BRAGG., 3/17/24 —More than 750 runners and walkers filled Fort Bragg’s Coastal Trail on Saturday, with competitive 5k and 10k races plus many people doing fun walk/runs and even a kiddie race to start the day. The Rotary Club’s Beer Festival attracted a big crowd for live music and tasting of beers and ciders from more than a dozen craft beer makers. It was one of the best turnouts of brewers ever and a complete comeback from cancellations during the pandemic. Skunk Train expeditions were packed. Organizers of the events were thrilled to see that after the pandemic ended all the fun for two years, people have finally come back. Locals found traffic backups from Noyo Harbor to Pudding Creek that equaled those of the two biggest traditional events in Fort Bragg, the World’s Largest Salmon Barbecue on the first Saturday in July and the Paul Bunyan Days on Labor Day weekend.
The beer festival was held in the same historic place it had been for years, the old Eagles Hall-Comrades Hall, Socialist Hall, Union Hall building on Corry Street in Fort Bragg. That building was purchased as a private residence in 2022 by Miranda and Stathi Pappas. The family lives upstairs and offers community groups the auditorium with its stage and famous madrone floors. Miranda Pappas said their two kids have the greatest fun room ever when the hall is not being used for events.
The Mendocino coast’s month-long party celebrating whales comes to an end Sunday. Events on Sunday include more activities from the Noyo Center for Marine Science. The Noyo Center has three locations in Fort Bragg and Noyo Harbor where people can see whale skeletons and listen to informative presentations. The Noyo Center recently told the Fort Bragg City Council they hope to break ground on their “La-Bone-atory,” a large warehouse building to be constructed in the vicinity of the old airplane runway once operated by Georgia Pacific. That building is designed to house the prized blue whale skeleton that locals helped remove after the 73-foot female blue whale was struck and killed by a scientific research ship in 2009. The bones were buried and the Noyo Center has been planning reconstruction ever since. The center hopes to break ground on the new building this year.
The council also heard about aquaculture the Noyo Center is involved in or planning. A program to brood abalone is being developed with the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians and UC Davis. The Noyo Center and Noyo Harbor District are also working with scientists on an aquaculture plan to turn purple urchins into a food source.
There is a book signing on Sunday and more chances to take tours and ask questions about the still emerging plans and a plethora of other educational and research activities. https://noyocenter.org/
Since Sunday is St. Patrick’s Day, some of the last day’s events are shamrock-themed. The Skunk Train continues its Leprechaun’s Locomotive event with 11:30 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. departures. The Fort Bragg-Mendocino Lions Club offers takeout and dine-in dinners at Lions Hall on Redwood Street in Fort Bragg beginning at 11:30 a.m.
As usual, the guests of honor are rarely seen at the whale festivals, except by the many people who took one of Fort Bragg’s party boats out to sea. Party boaters reported whales approaching the boats and lots of views of the sometimes playful beasts that are as big or bigger than a full-size big city bus. The boats are forbidden from approaching the whales, so it’s all up to the cetaceans how close they come to excited watchers.
And there is another reason to celebrate: After a terrifying 30 percent drop in Eastern Pacific Gray Whale numbers since 2017, scientists believe the die-offs are over.
Whale Lore
There are four kinds of whales commonly seen off the Mendocino coast: gray whales, humpbacks, blue whales and killer whales, which are actually dolphins. While this is not prime viewing season for the other three less often seen types, gray whales are in the midst of their migration from Baja to Alaskan waters.
A study published in Science magazine blames climate change for the massive starvations seen in the last few years. The premise is that once dependable Arctic waters have become unpredictable in terms of food populations and the extent of ice.
Gray whales do something no other whale appears to do, which is to follow a coastal migration route every year. Their predictability and approachability resulted in them being hunted to extinction by men in wooden ships first on the eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean and then on the New World side. The Western Pacific Gray Whale was hunted into what was believed to be extinction by the 20th century and the Eastern Pacific Gray Whale was on the verge before hunting was halted in the 1940s. After the passage of the Marine Mammal Act, the gray whale population came back to nearly 15,000 by the 1960s, then continued to grow and stayed between 20,000 and 25,000 between from the 1990s until the die-off that began in 2017 and is believed now at an end.
The best time to see whales off the Mendocino coast is March, when the majority of gray whales are headed north from their birthing and playing grounds in the warm waters off Baja to their ice-cold feeding waters off Alaska. April is when cow-calf pairs are often seen on their way north. A small number of iconoclastic individual cetaceans may actually be headed south just when everybody else is headed north, scientists say.
Most whales leave Alaska waters in the fall, although some dawdle until December in high latitudes. They stay two to three months in the warm Baja waters, most leaving to head back north from January to March. Some whales migrate only a short distance, and some go from Baja all the way through the Bering Straits to the Arctic Sea. The gray whales’ trip, up to 15,000 miles, is called the longest known migration for any mammal.
Because of the high cliffs along the Northern California coast and the predictable nearshore migration of grays, the Mendocino coast is considered one of the best spots to watch whales. It can be done year-round, not just during the whale festival’s prime month for viewing. Seen from shore, gray whales can be distinguished from humpback whales by their heart-shaped spout and their lack of a dorsal fin.
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