If you feel like you’ve been seeing a lot of reports lately about whales dying and washing up on Washington beaches — you’re not imagining it. Something unusual is happening. And it’s even been alarming the researchers who’ve spent their careers studying these animals.
So far this year, 25 gray whales have been found dead in Washington, making this year’s count the third highest in a half century, and the migration season is not over yet.
“We think the majority of whales that die don’t wash up,” said John Calambokidis, senior research biologist and one of the founders of Cascadia Research Collective. “The number that we’re seeing on shore represents maybe just a fifth or a tenth of the true number dying.”
To understand why this is alarming, we need a little history.
Eastern North Pacific gray whales were nearly wiped out by commercial whaling down to maybe two thousand animals by the 1920s. Starting in the mid-1930s, the League of Nations adopted a commercial hunting ban that protected gray whales — the first of its kind to protect a whale species from commercial whaling. They came roaring back, and just a few years ago there were around 20,000 of them.
“You could call this sort of one of the great environmental success stories in history,” says Jason Colby, a professor of history at the University of Victoria who is writing a book about gray whales. “It’s an amazing success story, but it’s a precious and fragile one as we’re finding out.”
Current estimates put the population around 11,000 animals, an almost 50% crash in just a few years — the largest decline researchers have tracked for this species.
Almost every whale washing up is severely malnourished. They’re starving.
These gray whales make the longest migration of any mammal on Earth, from breeding lagoons in Baja all the way up to the Arctic, where they eat for about five or six months a year in the Bering and Chukchi seas. They feed on tiny crustaceans called amphipods that live on the ocean floor. They are the only baleen whale that scoops their food from the bottom of the ocean.
And that food source in the Arctic might be the problem.
“The whales we’re seeing dying now are whales that didn’t get enough to eat last year,” says Calambokidis. “And now they’ve run through their reserves.”
Researchers think this could be linked to how climate change is reshaping the Arctic. Less sea ice means less ice algae, which feeds the amphipods, which feed the whales. It’s potentially a food chain that’s unraveling.
“The Arctic ecosystem has been one of the ecosystems that’s seen a lot of change over the last 20, 30 years and seems to be one of the areas where climate change is having one of its biggest effects,” says Calambokidis.
But not all gray whales are struggling equally. Some have found different, more reliable feeding grounds in Puget Sound.
One small group comes into northern Puget Sound each year to feed on dense beds of ghost shrimp. Another group, known as the Pacific Coast Feeding Group, does not even migrate to the Arctic. Both of those populations seem to be doing well.
However, the majority of the whales migrate to and primarily feed in Arctic waters.
“That’s the unit that seems to be being impacted by this mortality event,” says Calambokidis. “That combined with the fact these animals are so malnourished, tells us the issue is with their prey and the abundance of their prey in the Arctic.”
Because they’re hungry, the whales are venturing into unusual places to find food. One gray whale even ended up 20 miles inland in the Willapa River in April — malnourished, disoriented, and it died there.
When whales get this depleted, they can lose their ability to navigate properly — and that brings a new set of dangers. They might come into contact with fishing activities, which can lead to entanglement, or swim into areas of greater vessel traffic, which makes them more vulnerable to vessel strikes. Many of the malnourished whales that have washed up also showed signs of blunt force trauma, likely from being hit by boats.
Cascadia Research Collective has recently observed debilitated whales in poor body condition in busy areas around Bremerton. Not only would vessel strikes injure these whales, but could pose a risk to boaters as well.
“If they’re not in full control of all of their faculties, they may be less able to navigate and avoid those hazards,” says Calambokidis.
April saw an unprecedented 17 strandings, but May is typically the worst month for gray whale strandings, based on the timing of their migration and when they are passing through Washington waters. High levels of strandings continue through June.
By the time they head north, they haven’t eaten in seven months. Female whales might also be nursing calves while they make the trek. It’s incredibly demanding work.
Female gray whales demonstrate an astonishing level of energetic efficiency, says Colby.
“When climate change and food availability has a similar and even greater impact than commercial whaling, it should give us pause,” says Colby.
Gray whales aren’t on the federal endangered species list and we’re not on the brink of a full ecosystem collapse. But the trend is serious.
