California's steadiest whale watcher doesn't like what she sees |
The handful of people sitting outside Point Vicente Interpretive Center on a Thursday morning in March came prepared. They donned long-sleeved shirts and wide-brimmed hats for sun protection, carried folding chairs and ample snacks so they could sit for hours on end, and wielded binoculars with a built-in compass (the group even has an official preferred model, Fujinon 7x50).
For most people, whale watching is a decidedly casual endeavor. People might spot a whale while on a tour boat, or in a lucky sighting while lounging on the beach. Casual is not the word to use for the volunteers with the Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project. For over 40 years, this mighty team of volunteers has staffed the interpretive center’s patio daily from December through mid-May, methodically watching the ocean for whales.
Alisa Schulman-Janiger has been there for each of those 40 years. The director of the Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project, which is operated by the Los Angeles chapter of the American Cetacean Society, has watched as gray whale numbers off the California coast climbed, then plummeted, then slowly climbed back up again. Now the gray whale population is on the decline once more, but this time it might not bounce back — all while the very land the whale count volunteers sit on slowly slides into the ocean.
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ACS board member Alisa Schulman-Janiger looks for whales at the Point Vicente Interpretive Center in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., on March 19, 2026.
“It’s the longest-running gray whale project, it’s full-season, and it’s also citizen science; there is no other thing like this,” said Schulman-Janiger, who has a photo of a whale for her phone background and is at the count at least four days a week. “We’ve been looking at the same water since 1984.”
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The Point Vicente Interpretive Center sits on the doomed Palos Verdes Peninsula, where landslide movement has accelerated following record-breaking rainfall in 2023, as climate change drives increasingly intense extremes between heavy rainfall and drought conditions in California. Meanwhile, climate change is also warming the ocean and reducing food for the gray whale population that migrates past the peninsula each year. In a way, both the........