Whales Rebound for West Coast Ritual
On the bluffs south of Los Angeles, spotting whales before they slalom
through oil rigs miles off the coast, researchers with telescopes have
counted more than three times as many calves in 2002 as they did all
last year. In the calm lagoons in Mexico, naturalists on motorboats
have documented roughly twice as many calves as they did in each
of the last three years, when the population began tapering off
substantially.

"It's nice to see the species recovering," said Gabriel Arturo Zaragoza,
the census coordinator for the Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve, where the
whales spend the winter.

Though they are heartened by the surge in births, few scientists
believed that the population was at risk of extinction. After gray whales
came off the endangered species list in 1994, their numbers swelled in
three years to 26,600, perhaps as many as there were before whalers
began decimating the population in the 19th century.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/17/science/17WHAL.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all