Gray whale deaths on West Coast may be linked to Arctic warmth

Dozens of gray whales have been found dead along the US West Coast in recent weeks and some scientists believe the cause lies far to the north, in the heated-up Arctic waters off Alaska.

Fifty-eight gray whales have been found stranded and dead so far this year in sites stretching from California to Alaska, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The latest discovery announced on Wednesday by NOAA was a dead gray whale in Turnagain Arm, a narrow glacier-fed channel off Anchorage where gray whales rarely venture.

“They’re moving north from their wintering grounds in Mexico and appear to be running out of steam,” Michael Milstein, a spokesman for NOAA’s Fisheries Service, said on Thursday.

Dead whales examined so far have been malnourished, and the current hypothesis is the animals failed to eat enough last year in their summering grounds in the Bering and Chukchi seas off Alaska, Milstein said.

That is where they do most of their annual feeding and where they pack on the fat that carries sustains them until the next summer, he said.

“People think that clearly something happened up there that led the whales to not get as much food,” Milstein said.

“Given that they put on the bulk of their weight in the summer season up there, the die is sort of cast there.”

Many of the dead whales have been found in San Francisco Bay and Puget Sound off Seattle.

The animals may be stopping there to look for food, or they could be “exhausted and they’re there looking for a place to rest,” Milstein said. — Reuters