Photo courtesy of Gretchen Steiger
Gray whales are regular visitors to Puget Sound, such as this whale in the shadow of the Olympic Mountains.

Watch for whales

Gray whales meander past the Washington coast on their way to arctic waters

N.S. NOKKENTVED, THE OLYMPIAN

Originally published Tuesday, March 26, 2002

OLYMPIA -- Whale-watching season is upon us, and nobody watches whales more intently than John Calambokidis.

"Some years we get a lot of animals in South Sound waters, some years we don't get any," said the Olympia researcher.

From mid-March through May, gray whales return to the Pacific Northwest on their way from the warm waters of the Mexican coast to the rich arctic waters of the Bering and Chukchi seas. Many make their way into bays and inlets along the way.

A few -- maybe six -- find their way to northern Puget Sound around Whidbey Island. And toward the end of the migration season, several more often move into southern Puget Sound, including South Sound.

"This is where they come to feed," Calambokidis said from his the second-floor office of Cascadia Research Collective, overlooking Percival Landing and the Olympia waterfront.

In the early 1980s, Calambokidis and Cascadia Research determined that the group of about 250 whales known as "seasonal residents" return year after year to Washington waters and other places along the coast from California to Southeast Alaska. This group includes the whales that come into Grays Harbor to the delight of whale watchers.

The whale can be identified by the patterns of pigmentation and scars on its sides.

The bulk of the estimated 26,000 gray whales, however, migrate more that 12,000 miles from winter calving inlets along Baja California to northern feeding areas.

The few whales that make it to central and southern Puget Sound and Hood Canal are often unhealthy and most of them end up dead, Calambokidis said. The numbers vary from year to year, from a couple up to a couple of dozen, and most years at least one makes it to South Sound.

Some die from killer whale attacks and ship collisions, and some get entangled in fishing nets. But most die from a lack of food -- perhaps a sign that the whale population is nearing it's habitat carrying capacity, he said.

Gray whales average about 45 feet long and weigh up to 33 tons. Females give birth every two years, usually in the winter. Calves are about 16 feet long at birth. By the time they are weaned nine months later, they measure about 26 feet. They are light to dark gray and covered barnacles, scrape marks and whale lice.

Taking in great gulps of bottom sediments, their filter-like baleen plates strain out ghost shrimp, worms, crab larva, small crabs and small fish.

Once they leave the rich northern waters on their annual migration to warm southern waters where they give birth to their young, gray whales don't eat until they return again nearly a year later.

Observing that migration is part of the whale research the group does with two 18 foot rigid-hull inflatable boats equipped with radios, GPS units, depth sounder, and emergency transponder. One boat is kept in central California and one in Olympia.

Since Calambokidis began studying them, gray whales have continued to recover from near extinction. The whales were on the original list of endangered species when it was enacted in 1973.

Whalers began hunting gray whales in the mid-1800 and stopped about 1880. Whaling resumed in 1914. By 1946, they were on the brink of extinction. They were granted protection -- with some exceptions. Siberians, Eskimos and the Makah continue to hunt gray whales, taking about 150 per year.

They were removed from the list in 1994. And they are welcome spring migrants along the Pacific Coast.

N.S. Nokkentved covers the outdoors for The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-754-5445 and at nnokkent@olympia.gannett.com.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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