Lost Leviathan

Nature should have told him that when he heads south from Alaska during his herd's annual autumn migration to warmer water, he has to bear right at San Francisco. Instead, the 40-ton, 40-ft. humpback whale turned left and headed inland under the Golden Gate Bridge. For more than a week he has been swimming aimlessly in the shallow Sacramento River delta 40 miles northeast of San Francisco, a freshwater environment that eventually may kill the giant saltwater mammal.

The loss of Humphrey, as the nearby Rio Vista whale watchers have named him, would be a serious one. The humpback whale is...

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