This story was originally published on LincolnChronicle.org and is used with permission.
As many questions as answers floated around the Hatfield Marine Science Center this week as researchers drawn from thousands of miles pondered the perilous fate of the Pacific gray whale.
The first-of-its kind gathering Wednesday and Thursday was held as the iconic whales face plummeting numbers and challenges not seen since perhaps the days when they were hunted to near-extinction in the late 19th Century.
“There’s virtually no chance of gray whales going extinct,” said Josh Stewart, an ecologist in Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute. But a dramatic decline of more than 30 percent in recent decades, he added, puts the current gray whale population as “far lower than anything we are used to.”
Themes of the formally titled Range-Wide Gray Whale Science Symposium were alarming enough to attract 300 researchers from six countries. Of those, about 150 attended in person at the center’s Carmen Ford Phillips Auditorium. The remainder attended virtually.
In addition to the many physical and environmental challenges facing the estimated 16,000 gray whales who make one of the longest annual migrations of any mammal on Earth, many in attendance also spoke privately of worries that an anti-science bent of the Trump administration makes matters only worse.
Some pointed to the reported 35 percent reduction in staff of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, many of them senior researchers and scientists, since Trump took office in 2025.
Others noted that the administration has already tipped its hand, for instance, by ordering the decommissioning of a $368 million deep sea observation system. That order, since partially reversed after congressional blowback, affected at least one array of data sensors off Newport.
“It’s basically just malice toward the environment,” Mark Palmer, associate director of the Berkeley-based Earth Island Institute, told the Lincoln Chronicle. “A lot of the folks here can’t talk about that because they may have too much to lose, but it’s certainly a reality many of them are dealing with.”
By the numbers
Any assessment of overall gray whale health starts with population counts and goes from there into increasingly more detailed information, presenters agreed.
Many noted that, yes, the total count is far below the 27,000 gray whales that populated the ocean waters from Mexico to the Arctic a decade ago. Complicating those counts is the difficulty of actually spotting individual whales and other census factors.
But the widespread agreement was that overall numbers are dropping, with no end in sight.
Steven Swartz, co-director and senior scientist at the Gray Whale Research in Mexico program, has studied gray whales in their breeding lagoons in Baja California since 1977.
About 15 years ago, he said, some 80 whale mothers with healthy calves were seen swimming in the lagoons, where grays historically spend their winter months before heading back toward feeding grounds in the Arctic.
This year, by contrast, that number fell to just eight.
“That got our attention,” he said. “It was disturbing and unusual.”
And the warming ocean thought to be helping disrupt normal breeding and migration habits and patterns, Swartz warned, are “only going to get warmer.”
High and dry
One indicator of poor health among the general population is the increased number of strandings reported over the past two years, according to some presentations. Throughout the gray whale’s entire range, strandings – often by emaciated animals – have been on the rise.
At least 150 gray whales have washed up dead on the West Coast this year along, according to NOAA’s most recent data. Of those, 11 washed up in Oregon and 30 in Washington.
Most of the deaths are attributed to the same factor that has caused the federal agency twice in the past 25 years to declare a so-called “unusual mortality event” – due to food-supply issues directly related to changes in Arctic conditions where gray whales typically feed.
More than one quarter of the whales that died in the 2019-2023 event perished from emaciation, said Lori Schwacke, director of scientific programs at the Marine Mammal Commission, which sponsored the symposium. That dwarfed the number of deaths attributed to boat strikes, killer whale attacks and crab gear entanglements.
A new mortality event will not be declared now as a result of rising whale strandings in 2025 and 2026, she said, because the cause of those deaths – lack of food in the Arctic – remains both persistent and unchanged.
Trouble in the north
In highlighting the origin of the whales’ ongoing troubles, some researchers pointed to the disappearance of the Arctic sea ice long considered as pivotal to the animals’ ability to fully stock up on food for the more than 10,000-mile round trip to Baja and back.
Kate Stafford, an associate professor at OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute, recalled for the audience an event in 1988 that enthralled news-watchers around the planet. It occurred when three young gray whales, apparently having overstayed their Arctic visit, became trapped in sea ice at least half a meter deep.
“Operation Breakthrough,” as their rescue became known, was watched by millions as the whales were eventually freed to begin their southward swim. Noting that sea ice has been disappearing rapidly in recent years, Stafford said, “That’s never, ever likely to occur again.”
That’s all the more critical because the great volumes of shallow, bottom-dwelling shrimp the whales rely on for their migration begin their own lifecycles by feeding on tiny algae that grow on the underside of sea ice before floating to the bottom, essentially fertilizing it.
Now, with Arctic sea ice at its lowest levels since monitoring began in 1979, what’s certain is that the massive, underwater dining cart gray whales have relied on for years is all but empty.
And even the shrimp – known as amphipods – that remain are far smaller than those the whales enjoyed in the past, said Jackie Grebmeier of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory at the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science.
“They are now much smaller in size,” she said, “meaning there is far less bang for the buck for anything depending on them as a food source.”
Relying on resilience
When it comes to what lies ahead for Pacific gray whales, the session was not without a sense of optimism.
Unlike blue whales, for instance, which rely almost exclusively on water-borne krill for food, grays can switch between a wide variety of prey, feeding on more than 90 different types of animals and organisms.
Gray whales also are highly adaptive when it comes to feeding strategies. They can employ at least five different types of methods to consume food that may be anywhere from the water column to tiny shrimp all but buried in the shallow sea floors of the Arctic.
Their golden ticket to survival, however, may lie their ability to find altogether new places to stop and feed along their migratory route.
They are already doing some of this by dipping into areas such as San Francisco Bay, among others, that they didn’t have to frequent at all when the Arctic could produce all the food they needed for a stop-free round trip.
The Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at the University of Santa Barbara is helping document this phenomenon by placing highly sensitive monitors in the bay, which, with the help of artificial intelligence, can detect when grays are in the area.
“We had some grant money left over and knew that the gray whales weren’t doing very well,” said Rachel Rhodes, a project scientist at the laboratory. “This seemed like the ideal way to help document what’s going on.”
A major drawback of the whales’ newfound strategy is that traveling into waters heavily populated by humans greatly increases the chances they will be struck and injured by passing ships. Of the documented deaths of gray whales in any given year, nearly 20 percent are associated with boat strikes.
But if that’s where the food is, researchers said, it’s hardly surprising that the whales will head there to feed.
John Calambokidis, a senior research biologist and one of the founders of Cascadia Research Collective in Seattle, is also helping document the dramatic appearance of whales near Grays Harbor on Washington’s central coast.
Of all the whales counted in the area last year, he told his audience, more than 100 were first timers who had not previously been seen in the area. It’s a telling detail, he said, and one that portends what may lie ahead if the gray whale is to survive.
In describing the foreseeable future of the whales, he added, “Everything focuses on supplemental feeding grounds.”
The whales’ past, presenters agreed, which includes surviving everything from the massive hunts of the late 1800s to more recent population declines, likely indicates they’ll be around for years to come.
In what numbers, however, appears to be anyone’s guess.
