The Virginian-Pilot
                             THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Thursday, August 8, 1996              TAG: 9608080380
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY PAUL CLANCY, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   58 lines

COAST GUARD GETS MORE WHALE-FRIENDLY

Young whales that have taken to the Virginia coastline as a prime feeding area are less at risk than before from large, fast boats going to the aid of distressed humans.

The Coast Guard, which has its Atlantic Area Office in Portsmouth, has agreed to abide by an order from the National Marine Fisheries Service to overhaul its operations along the Eastern Seaboard because they endanger whales.

The order stems from a collision last October between a Coast Guard cutter and a whale, probably a humpback, off the New England coast, with unknown consequences to the whale.

The order requires the Coast Guard to implement 11 changes to its nonemergency operations, including reducing vessel speed, developing new systems for preventing collisions and devising a warning system for ships traveling through known whale habitats.

The Coast Guard says it is meeting with the Fisheries Service to work out details of implementing the order. In the meantime, a spokesman said, it will continue normal day-to-day operations but take extra precautions in areas where whales are present.

These operations include search and rescue, marine environmental protection, aids to navigation, maritime law enforcement and fisheries patrols.

Hampton Roads has become a headquarters, of sorts, for younger whales.

Since 1992, according to the Virginia Marine Science Museum, at least 20 whales, mostly humpbacks but also a few fin whales, have adopted the Atlantic waters close to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay as their winter feeding grounds.

The area, which ranges as far south as Oregon Inlet in North Carolina, is rich in small fish like herring and bay anchovies that baleen whales such as humpbacks and fins love to gulp.

Mark Swingle, assistant curator at the museum, says the winter visitors are mostly immature whales who are more interested in feeding than following their older cousins to breeding and calving grounds in the Caribbean.

``There's not a lot of food in the breeding grounds - they're strictly for breeding - so, there's an advantage for these animals to stay and feed where they can grow,'' Swingle said.

Most of the Virginia whales apparently rejoin members of their pod when they head north in summer to New England waters, he said. But recent sightings show that a few of them hang around the Virginia coast, although farther out in the ocean, during summer.

The museum has spotted about 20 whales near the coast. It operates whale-watching trips from December to March.

The Coast Guard has several cutters and buoy tenders in Portsmouth and at small boat stations along the Eastern Seaboard.

Its Maintenance and Logistics Command is in downtown Norfolk. Its operations recently were brought to Hampton Roads from Governors Island, N.Y.

Petty Officer Tod Lyons said the service ``will continue operations but be extra careful when whales and other marine mammals are seen.'' He pointed out that there have been many instances in which Coast Guard vessels have rescued whales that have become tangled in fishing lines and nets. by CNB