For State Parks Ranger Robert Tolin, serving aboard a boat that helped protect two stranded humpback whales in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta was a rewarding experience.

“Stepping into that kind of experience wasn't that unusual,” said Tolin, a former Ventura State Beach and Huntington State Beach lifeguard and current Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area ranger since the 1980s.

“We're trained to operate in the incident command structure, so it was just actually putting our training to good use,” added Tolin, aquatic supervisor for Oceano Dunes.

Tolin was one of only a handful of California Department of Parks and Recreation staff and the only State Parks ranger in the county to assist with the rescue.

“It was an honor for me to be selected and approved” to assist, Tolin said. “It's the most unique out-of-county experience I've ever had. I feel like I learned quite a bit, and I tried to glean from (the scientists) what I could about the habits of the whales.”

Lending a hand

The whales were first spotted May 13 in the Sacramento River near the small town of Rio Vista.

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The California Department of Fish and Game worked with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to protect the two humpback whales, later named Delta and Dawn.

The pair journeyed up the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to the Port of Sacramento Turning Basin in West Sacramento.

It was later determined that State Parks had the resources to assist, said Alex K. Peabody, aquatic specialist for State Parks' Public Safety Division.

“I utilized personnel that were immediately available to assist, and that included Ranger Robert Tolin from the Oceano Dunes, myself and a lifeguard peace officer from Monterey, Eric Sturm,” said Peabody.

Tolin explained, “(State Parks has) a lot of aquatic resources, Fish and Game does, too, but they don't have any lifeguard-type resources.”

Floating platform

Tolin used his days off to assist as an unofficial deckhand aboard a 25-foot Boston Whaler patrol vessel from nearby San Luis Reservoir along an estimated eight-mile stretch of water May 23 through 25.

It was one of 12 boats are planned for a herding operation. Scientists aboard the boat would also monitor and observe the whales.

“It was our job to support the scientists, to ensure their safety, monitor boat traffic in the area and warn people away if they were approaching in boats,” Peabody said.

“I went there thinking I might actually have to perform lifeguarding skills,” said Tolin. But later he realized his duties would include a broader range of tasks.

Peabody would captain the boat as Tolin and Sturm maintained the dock lines, maintained safety and helped deploy scientific equipment, including raising and lowering the device used by scientists to project sound into the water, Peabody said.

“I was able to set up the wiring so that (NOAA) could power their computers and their transducer,” said Peabody. “And then (State Parks) would maneuver the vessel and allow the vessel to simply drift at a location where we anticipated the whales to be, which was primarily upriver, up-current form the whales, in an effort to encourage them to swim downstream.”

“Sometimes, it seemed that the whales did respond,” he added.

Tolin described one particular incident:

“At one point, the whale was coming right towards the bow, and we hit it at pretty close range with sounds produced from the transducer, and the interesting thing was the whale didn't even flinch, and that was very surprising to the scientists; they expected a response from the whale, and they did not get any kind of response.”

Lifeguarding

Tolin said most of boaters were aware of the whales and the safety boundary he helped maintain around the animals, but others were not.

“People would come around the corners not knowing where the whales were, and we would have to get them to slow down,” said Tolin. “It's kind of a protective attachment. That was part of our purpose in being there, to protect the whales.

“There were a couple of times that it got sketchy on the last days,” he said. “There were newspeople with shoulder-mounted cameras standing on the bow of this (Vallejo City Fire) boat, and a couple of times I was worried they would fall in - that would have been the only time that I would have had to do any kind of lifeguarding,” Tolin said.

Tolin returned to Oceano Dunes SVRA in time for Memorial Day weekend activity before the whales silently slipped underneath the Golden Gate Bridge the following week.

From a personal standpoint, Tolin said, the incident response was impressive to watch and be involved in.

“You can sense the dedication that people have to these types of incidents,” he said.

Josh Petray can be reached at 489-4206, Ext. 5015, or jpetray@santamariatimes.com.

June 11, 2007