Whales Head Home after 2-Week Stay

Officials think lost humpbacks have returned to the Pacific
By Dustin Lushing,  Newser Staff
Posted May 30, 2007 2:10 PM CDT
Whales Head Home after 2-Week Stay
A crowd of people watch two whales pass under the Carquinez Bridge in Crockett, Calif., Tuesday, May 29, 2007. The whales lost in the Sacramento River made considerable progress in their quest to return to the Pacific Ocean. They were first spotted May 13 and got as far as 90 miles inland to the Port...   (Associated Press)

Moby-Dick and Jonah can rest easy—the most overexposed whales in the world appear to have returned to the obscurity of the Pacific Ocean. The two humpbacks, who sparked an international media frenzy after getting stuck in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta 2 weeks ago, haven't been seen since late yesterday night.

Officials think they may have slipped overnight from the San Francisco Bay into open ocean. That's good news for the whales—even if it lacked a certain sense of closure for the thousands who’ve followed their journey. "It would be nice to have a dramatic ending where we're standing on the Golden Gate Bridge as they pass under," a state spokeswoman said. "But most important is that they're in safer water." (More whale stories.)

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