SEATTLE (AP) — Federal researchers say gray whale populations along the West Coast are showing signs of recovery, five years after hundreds of gray whale carcasses washed up on beaches from Alaska to Mexico. It is pointed out that
The population increase comes after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association determined in November that an “unusual mortality event” that began in 2019 had ended.
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“We’re happy to report some good news over the last few years,” Amy Lang, a research biologist at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center, told The Seattle Times.
A gray whale dives near Whidbey Island as seen from a Pacific Whale Watch Association vessel in Washington state on May 4, 2022. Federal researchers say gray whale populations along the West Coast are showing signs of recovery, five years after hundreds of dead gray whales washed up on beaches from Alaska to Mexico. ing. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
The agency estimates the total number of gray whales in the eastern North Pacific to be between 17,400 and 21,300, up from last year’s estimate of 13,200 to 15,960.
The whale population began to decline after numbering around 27,000 in 2016. The mortality rate will reach its peak between December 17, 2018 and December 31, 2020, the agency announced. The case involved the carcasses of 690 gray whales that had washed ashore from Alaska to Mexico. Of those, 347 were in the United States, 316 in Mexico, and 27 in Canada.
In a typical year, about 35 whales are washed up dead in the United States. Five years ago, those whales washed up on coastlines in California, Oregon, Washington state, and Alaska.
Every year in late September, whales migrate 10,000 miles (16,093 km) from their feeding grounds in the Arctic to give birth along Mexico’s Baja Peninsula.
NOAA researchers said the deaths were due to ecosystem changes in the Bering Sea and northern Chukchi Sea off northern Alaska that have changed the availability and quality of prey.
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“These changes contributed to the deterioration in nutritional status observed in whales living on their wintering grounds in Mexico and gray whales that stranded and died in all three countries,” NOAA said. “This malnutrition increased mortality and reduced calf production during the whales’ annual northward migration (from Mexico to Alaska), resulting in an overall population decline. Ta.”
Gray whales in the eastern North Pacific were removed from the endangered species list in 1994 after recovering from their whaling days.
