Cal - nobody here, I believe, thinks that it is impossible "that intelligent and sensitive mammals, such as whales, . . . sense[d] the quake." I'm perfectly pleased to believe that they might have, and, if they did, it was due to some phenomenon that is not mysterious, and has little usefulness for practical predictions. While such sightings as whale beachings prior to a major earthquake are most probably coincidental in most cases, it is certainly possible that they are reacting to foreshocks, tiny electrical fluctuations (certainly plausible in M9+ quakes), gas emissions, and etc. - phenomena which no reputable scientist denies exist. Problem is, those phenomena are entirely and provably missing in by far the majority of quakes, and do occur on a multitude of occasions where they are NOT followed by any significant quake.

All predictors have to do to prove they have a succesful methodology is show it as a scientist would. Scientists would eagerly seize on any well-documented report that showed a methodology is statistically significant. If you don't trust those with the math expertise here, start making your predictions in a format which is uneditable and public, and then shell out the few bucks for a mathematician of your choosing to do a full analysis. She should be somebody with some knowledge of geophysics or seismology. That analysis would not necessarily prove the success of the methodology, but, on the other hand, it just might!

Michael F. Williams
Arroyo Grande, CA USA