This story aired in the November 5, 2025 episode of Crosscurrents.
Shamu. Moby Dick. Keiko from “Free Willy.” If you’re from the Bay Area, your list of famous whales might also include a certain humpback whale that came to be known as Humphrey.
He took a wrong turn up into the Sacramento River in October of 1985. Scientists, marine biologists and passionate volunteers mounted one of the largest and most publicized whale rescues in US history.
It captured the attention of the country and one Bay Area town in particular.
This week marks 40 years since Humphrey found his way back to the Pacific. The town of Rio Vista, is waaaay up on the delta, east of Antioch. And the people there are holding onto the story of Humphrey the Humpback.
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TRANSCRIPT:
JONATHAN LAMB: Come on in! We’re gonna do the announcements right away. Good morning…
REPORTER: It's 8am on Friday morning at DH White Elementary School in Rio Vista, California. Jonathan Lamb–Mr. Lamb to his students– is greeting his kids as they walk in.
JONATHAN LAMB: Good morning…
REPORTER: There is an uncommon amount of whale imagery going on in here–even for a third grade classroom. On the door, a sign says “Welcome to Our Pod” in letters that encircle a drawing of a whale. Then, on the wall underneath the American flag, there’s a chart that tracks the students’ independent book reading– and it’s dotted with little paper grey whales.
JONATHAN: They each get a whale with their name on it and all these whales up here have already made it, made their goal.
Mr. Lamb is wearing a blue t-shirt with a whale on it. The whole school wears blue on Friday, he tells me, and the classroom with the highest "blue count" gets to hold on to a plush… stuffed whale for the week.
REPORTER: And what do the kids do with the stuffed animal?
JONATHAN: Sometimes it passes around. They read with him during reading time, things like that.
REPORTER: I counted four books about whales floating around.. “Baby Whale Rescue” and “Who Would Win: Whale vs. Giant Squid”...
JONATHAN: Got my little Humphrey section right here…
REPORTER: …and two books about Humphrey the Humpback.
JONATHAN: Part of the announcements I do every Friday, I kind of serialize the story of Humphrey. So I'm trying to make sure all the kids in the community know so that he's not forgotten. He's remembered.
REPORTER: Why do you wanna keep him alive?
JONATHAN: Uh, he's our mascot. And it's also just an uplifting story about how the community came together…and I think they saw Humphrey as, you know, this poor whale. We don't want 'em to die.
NIGHTLINE: Probably nothing draws human sympathy like a vulnerable animal, an injured bird, a little kitten in a tree, or apparently a 40 ton whale.
REPORTER: On October 10, 1985, a humpback whale,eventually dubbed “Humphrey,” took a wrong turn–one that would turn him into an international celebrity. For reasons known only to him, Humphrey deviated from his annual migration route from Alaska to Mexico in the Pacific Ocean and instead swung left into the San Francisco Bay and under the Golden Gate Bridge.
Humphrey hung out near Oakland and Berkeley for a few days. And then, baffling everyone, he swam in the wrong direction nearly 70 miles, past Richmond and under the bridge to Vallejo into the California Delta. This is where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, flowing from the mountains, slow down before entering the Bay and form a complex web of natural and manmade channels, levees, and islands.
Four days after his first sighting in the Bay, Humphrey was observed by the residents of a small town on the Sacramento River called Rio Vista.
Sound of the Rio Vista bridge
REPORTER: A truss bridge across the river -- which can lift up to let boats pass -- marks the entrance to town. Near there is where I meet with Kurt Feeter, who rolls up on a mint green beach cruiser.
KURT FEETER: This is my favorite part–
Sound of a bike bell
REPORTER: He’s in his 60s but has that California outdoorsy vibe that is ageless.
KURT: I just wind-surfed yesterday and I'm really sore…
REPORTER: Kurt moved to this Delta town back in 1984 so he could be out on the water every day. The day Humphrey arrived, Kurt and his wife were paddling on the river.
KURT: As we came under the bridge, there was a kid sitting right over here on the bank and he yelled, “Watch out! There's a whale out there!” So all of a sudden …the whale breached on the other side of the bridge kind of where that red buoy is right there.
REPORTER: Back then, Kurt was working as a carpenter putting shingles on the roof of the Point Restaurant, less than a mile down shore from where we are now.
KURT: For two or three days we were right there, like looking down on the river, and Humphrey would come up near us and then he'd come up down by the bridge and he just kind of hung out right in this bay for a couple days.
REPORTER: A few blocks down the shore from where I meet Kurt, the Rio Vista Museum sits facing the river. I ask the volunteers here if I can see the Humphrey exhibit.
MUSEUM EMPLOYEE #1: Where do we have the Humphrey stuff?
MUSEUM EMPLOYEE #2 : There was supposed to have been something put together. I don't think they ever did
MUSEUM EMPLOYEE #1: Don't know where it is. Oh, here it is. Here it is. Duh. Look at that. That's it.
REPORTER: The Humphrey section is tucked away in the corner. It’s a charming mix of items in a glass case: A Humphrey T shirt, small whale figurines made by locals, a day-by-day timeline of his journey through the Delta.
MARY ANNE PETERSON: Oh, wow. I don't - see, I don't remember seeing this. This is cute.
REPORTER: This is Mary Anne Peterson. She’s a retired librarian who is on the board of the museum. And she has her own Humphrey collection at home - somewhere.
MARY ANNE: I don't know where it is… cause I saved Newsweeks magazines and… and I don't have it. So I just have my memory!
REPORTER: Mary Anne first saw Humphrey in the water at the Point Restaurant - where Kurt was working. She remembers thinking:
MARY ANNE: That's a big fish!
REPORTER: From that day forward, whenever Mary Anne– a stay-at-home mom at the time– got a call about Humphrey’s whereabouts, she grabbed her kids and the neighbors kids and jumped into her big blue station wagon and headed down to the water.
MARY ANNE: The kids all get out of the car, we park the car, we get out, we watch him. Everybody's just like, wow, this is so neat! You know, the little kids, they're like - my son was five at the time. He is 45 now. So, you know, and he would always say when we picked him up at kindergarten, “Do I have to go to the river again today?” And we would just always say, “Well, this is history. You've gotta do this.”
REPORTER: It wasn’t just history for the residents of Rio Vista, people were coming from all over the state and country. TV Journalists, scientists, and thousands of curious Californians flocked to the levees and river banks to catch a glimpse of the whale. They came by car, jet ski, sailboat, houseboat.
At the Point Restaurant, you could get the “Swordfish ala Humphrey” for dinner. And the Pizza Factory on Main Street added a Humphrey Special to their menu.
Mary Anne and her friend Donna started chatting up the scientists and news crews. That’s how they met Jim Hudnall, from the Maui Whale Institute. Imagine Indiana Jones if he were a marine biologist. He let Mary Anne and her friend follow him around.
MARY ANNE: I don't know if you've ever followed like a groupie. You follow people, well, you hook up with like the news people you knew they were there every day. You knew Jim Hudnell was there every day. So we just kind of followed those people, every place they went, we would go.
REPORTER: Were you Jim Hudnall’s groupie or were you Humphey’s groupie?
MARY ANNE: I was Humphrey's groupie (laughs)
REPORTER: After being spotted in the river by Rio Vista, Humphrey swam further upstream into various sloughs. Sloughs are narrow, shallow offshoots off the main channel - like a cul-de-sac.
Scientists thought Humphrey only had about two weeks in freshwater before his skin would develop infections or ulcers. And they were at a loss because - it didn’t seem like Humphrey wanted to leave.
Here’s Nightline’s Ken Kashiwahara:
KASHIWAHARA: Scientists gave chase in boats and helicopters, but the wayward whale kept wandering up a river instead.
SCIENTIST #1: “Looks like we got him turned the right direction, maybe”
SCIENTIST #2: “Which direction is the right direction?”
SCIENTIST #1: “Towards the ocean, I hope!”
KASHIWAHARA: But it was the wrong direction.
REPORTER: Humphrey had swam so far inland, he was nearly a third of his way across the state of California. Whales come into the San Francisco Bay, and still do to this day, but never before had any whale swam this far inland into freshwater.
Everyone had opinions about what was going in Humphrey’s head - here’s Indiana Jones look-a-like Jim Hudnall:
JIM HUDNALL: “Perhaps Humphrey just wandered up river to feed. Perhaps he's brain damaged. Perhaps he's insane.”
REPORTER: Then Humphrey swam under a small wooden overpass and into Shag Slough, a short canal that ended in a dried up agricultural field.
Somehow Humphrey got under this structure, but when he tried to go back out, he was blocked.
Humphrey was stuck.
The sound of a car blinker
STEVE LEUTHOLTZ: We're gonna turn onto Liberty Island Road, which will lead us to Shag Slough where Humphrey was trapped.
REPORTER: I’m headed out to Shag Slough with Steve Leutholtz.
The sound of a car door slamming shut
Steve has lived in the area his whole life - on a ranch that his grandfather established. Steve’s in his 70s now, and is a grandfather to Avvy who, incidentally, was Mr. Lamb’s student last year.
The sound of walking on gravel
The sound of someone throwing out a fishing line and then a *plunk!*
REPORTER: There are a few guys already out here with lines in the water.
STEVE: What are you throwing?
FISHERMAN: It's a little 2.4 inch, uh, Goby swim bait.
STEVE: Have you ever got any good size fish outta here?
Back in 1985, Steve heard on his scanner that Humphrey might be stuck in Shag Slough. He drove his family out here on the back roads to get a closer look, determined to get to Humphrey before anyone else.
STEVE: So my wife and my kids and I walked out onto the bridge and looked straight down on Humphrey as he swam up and down. We were standing on the middle of the bridge. And he was right below us. Right below us. It couldn't have been any closer. He was frustrated because he can get and get through. So he would lay on his side and take his long pectoral fin and slap the water in anger.
REPORTER: It’s really hard to imagine one of the world’s largest mammals swimming in this water - let alone having room enough to make a U-turn.
STEVE: It's kinda like a corn maze, you know? He went in the entrance of like a corn maze and he kept taking what he thought was the right way out and he kept going the wrong way.
REPORTER: Guess who else went out to Shag Slough to see Humphrey? His number one fan, Mary Anne Peterson.
MARY ANNE: By the time we got to Shag Slough, so it was neat because, Jim Hudnall let us listen to him under the water. He let us put earphones on and he had mics and he put 'em down in the water and he would let us listen to his sounds that he made. They were very low sounds. Kind of, almost like a cry. It was just kind of eerie.
REPORTER: Can you just make a sound that sounds like it?
MARY ANNE: Mmmmmm. Ahhhhhh.
It was a like, almost like a quiet moment because everything else has been so chaotic following him down the river. So here he was in quiet place. But I'm sure in his mind he wasn't, he wasn't in a quiet place. He wanted out of there.
STEVE: They had to get 'em out of there somehow, or he would die. And I don't think they really knew what they were gonna do.
REPORTER: Here’s a clip from News 10 with reporter Dan Adams.
DAN ADAMS: Well, Dick Humphrey remains once again in Shags Slough tonight. This is the exact same place where he is been for nearly a week now….
ONLOOKER: It’s very sad. I don’t think he’ll get out of it.
The sound of pipes being struck underwater
REPORTER: Finally, a rescue plan was hatched by the scientists. Upstream from Humphrey, volunteers on boats struck pipes in the water with mallets.
DAN ADAMS: Banging the pipes transmits low frequency, underwater sounds designed to scare the whale down river.
REPORTER: Up until now, Humphrey had appeared lethargic.
DAN ADAMS: …..as the boats closed in, Humphrey became more agitated.
COAST GUARD: Roger that. Uh, whale boats are neutral. Neutral, neutral. Stop banging. Stop banging. Stop Banging.
REPORTER: He was irritated by the noise and refused to swim under the wooden structure and out of the slough.
COAST GUARD: Let’s back up, let’s back up.
REPORTER: Volunteers cleared some obstacles underwater and dredged the river bottom, and then….
KASHIWAHARA: Rescuers tried again and succeeded. Yay!
REPORTER: Mary Anne and her kids were there to witness the drama…
MARY ANNE: And the kids were all going, oh my God! Oh my God!
REPORTER: The pipe noises provoked Humphrey to swim down river towards Rio Vista.
MARY ANNE: The next stop is the bridge. So of course we jumped in the car and we go down and we parked at the boat dock.
REPORTER: Cars were stopped on the Rio Vista bridge and told to turn off their engines. The hum of traffic was replaced with the murmur of gathering crowds.
MARY ANNE: People were everywhere. All over the bridge. And you could see people on the other side of the river. The flotilla of boats came into view, and in front of those boats was Humphrey.
And then all of a sudden they shot off a flare. It lit up the sky more than fireworks ever would, it was very surreal. You could see the boats, in the river, and they were banging on pipes to keep Humphrey going in front of them. Clank, clank, clank, clank, it's like a metal on metal.
Everybody was in awe of Humphrey going down the river. It was like, oh my God, he's outta here. You know, everybody was, I mean, it was really exciting!
REPORTER: Humphrey finally crossed under the bridge the next day. And once he did, he wouldn’t return to Rio Vista.
MARY ANNE: We didn't follow him to Antioch. You didn't wanna keep following him and following him, following him. It was just like… He's out of Rio Vista, he's safe, he's on his way. … I think it was just like a happy goodbye… But it was an exciting two weeks!
REPORTER: For Rio Vistans, Humphrey had left the building. But he still had many miles to go to reach the Pacific.
A biologist had another idea. What if they could use whale recordings to lure Humphrey toward the ocean? They enlisted the help of Bernie Krause, an audio engineer and nature sound recorder… Here he is reading from his extensive field notes:
BERNIE KRAUSE: Sunday, November 3rd, 1985. As we neared the Antioch Bridge…
REPORTER: Humphrey was swimming around the Antioch bridge, near where the San Joaquin and the Sacramento Rivers merge. Over 200 boats filled the water – the Marines, the Army, the Coast Guard, the press and private boaters. Bernie and his crew were on a 40 foot cabin cruiser, stationed a quarter-mile downriver from Humphrey.
Over the radio — Bernie got the go-ahead. He lowered a 120 pound speaker into the water.
BERNIE: I switched on the recorder …
The sound of humpback whales feeding– the actual audio that was played underwater for Humphrey.
REPORTER: The whale beelined up to the speakers suddenly….
BERNIE: …covering the 400 yards between us and it in about 15 seconds…
REPORTER: It caused the boat to tilt so fast that Bernie thought they might capsize. Once the boat settled, they put it in gear.
BERNIE: … the whale tucked its nose to our stern as if it had discovered a long lost friend…
As the boat headed toward the ocean, thousands of Humphrey’s fans had lined up on the shores of Martinez, Port Costa and Crockett. It seemed like Humphrey knew this, and he swam close to the shore.
BERNIE: … and either did a full breach or tail slap, sending plumes of water high into the air to the crowd's delight.
REPORTER: They heard people cheering and shouting from a mile out on the river.
BERNIE: ….The other miracle was that this creature, which everyone thought was ill incapacitated or crazy, followed our recording for seven hours covering nearly 50 miles from Antioch to just off Angel Island in San Francisco Bay before we lost him in the darkness on Sunday night.
REPORTER: The crew found Humphrey again in the morning and lured him toward the ocean like a puppy.
Hundreds of people gathered under the Golden Gate Bridge to wave goodbye. Around 4pm on November 4th, 1985, Humphrey the Humpback whale found his way home to the Pacific Ocean.
His 26 days of inland meandering were the longest by a Humpback whale ever recorded. No one expected to see him ever again. But the wayward whale did come back to the Bay five years later only to get stuck in the mud flats near Candlestick Park.
NBC NEWSCAST: This video is showing the moment that people spotted him for the second time near the old Candlestick Park…
Again, volunteers mobilized to help him get safely back to the ocean. But to this day, no one can really explain why Humphrey did what he did.
Strangely enough, Humphrey wasn’t the only whale to visit Rio Vista. In 2007, a female humpback and her calf, dubbed Dawn and Delta, swam up the Sacramento River 20 miles further than Humphrey did.
Not that Mary Anne Peterson cared.
MARY ANNE: Delta and Dawn came down years later, which didn't even impress me. Somebody said, “Oh, there's another whale,” and I said “yeah…” I didn't even go to the river. I didn't even wanna see them. Humphrey was the whale.
The sound of walking into the Pizza Factory
REPORTER: Are you hungry?
STEVE: I actually am…
REPORTER: After visiting Shag Slough, Steve and I head to the Pizza Factory for lunch.
STEVE: Do you still have Humphrey specials?
CASHIER: Yeah. …some people call it Humphrey special and some people call it factory special.
REPORTER: The Humphrey Special is no longer on the menu, but people in the know can order it.
STEVE: Well, I'd like a medium Humphrey Special.
CASHIER: Okay.
REPORTER: I ask Steve about what Humphrey’s legacy might be today.
STEVE: I don't think there's a whole lot of legacy left 'cause it's been so many years. It was pretty special.
REPORTER: Did you just get a little emotional?
STEVE: Yeah a little. It’s bringing back a lot of memories. You forget how how many years have passed and, other than the older people, nobody really knows the whole story.
REPORTER: Humphrey’s legacy is aging along with the people who witnessed it… and you can’t really interview people about the history they lived through without them getting a little emotional that time has passed.
MARY ANN: It's less about Humphrey and more about your surroundings and the people you're with, and the people you love and the people you've lost. And so you get emotional…. It just brings back a lot of memories. I'm a crier.
REPORTER: Like a Rorsharch test, people had their own individual reaction to the memory of Humphrey.
For Steve, the grandfather, it connected him to the feeling of being a young dad and sharing the natural world with his kids.
For Kurt, the wind surfer, it was a reminder that the river was not only Rio Vista’s front yard, but a doorway to the ocean and the rest of the world.
For Mary Anne - Humphrey’s story was a joyful collective feat:
MARY ANNE: To see a creature like this so helpless– even though he was so big– to get in a situation he couldn't get out of without all these people coming together, the scientists and the marine biologists and everybody coming together and helping this creature free himself from a situation he couldn't have been freed from by himself… I think I feel honored that I got to watch him.
REPORTER: Humphrey’s ultimate legacy might be something much simpler. For this small-town community who, many years ago, came down to the river and turned their faces to the water, he gave them a really good story to tell.
JONATHAN: (on intercom) Good morning, DHY. It is time for our Friday announcements. Now that fall is here. I'm reminded of the fall of 1985 when Humphrey, the humpback whale, really visited Rio Vista. Now let's sing our song. Honoring our beloved whale.
KIDS: (singing) Humphrey the Humpback Whale. What a mighty whale was he.. He went past Rio Vista to see what he could see.…
— — —hu
Additional credits: “Where Are You Now, Humphrey the Whale?” by Bay Area resident Rocky Leplin. Music by Lee Rosevere
