For the time of year, it wasn't at all what Annie Douglas expected to see. The leader of a marine mammal survey team from Cascadia Research, Douglas had observed hundreds of dolphins off the California coast during a November research cruise aboard the Scripps research vessel Roger Revelle. But off the starboard bow observers had alerted her to a humpback whale arching as it surfaced south of Ventura. That a humpback whale had appeared at all was noteworthy. Surveyors from Cascadia, a nonprofit research organization based in Olympia, Washington, have seen a sharp drop in humpback sightings here since the El Nino season of 1997-98. Douglas's whale should have been headed to Mexico by now for breeding season. Yet by the end of the cruise, 14 such hump- back sightings would take place.
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