Gray whales die in large numbers, once again.
At least 70 whales have perished since the beginning of the year in the shallow and protected lagoons of the Baja Peninsula in Mexico where the animals gathered for the eons for the calf, the nurse and the race, said Steven Swartz, a marine scientist who studied gray whales since 1977. And only five pairs of Wintering San Ignacio, most of them say Swartz.
This is the lowest number of mother-old pairs never observed in the lagoon, According to annual reports From Gray Whale Research in Mexico, an international team of researchers – co -founded by Swartz – who has observed gray whales in Laguna San Ignacio since the late 1970s.
The whales are now heading north. In the past two weeks only, three gray whales have died in the Bay of San Francisco, one of which was described by veterinarians and pathologists of the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito as meager and malnutrition. Evaluations on the other two deaths are still underway.
Alisa Schulman-Janiger, who led the chapter of Los Angeles to the gray census of the Whale of the American Cetacean Society at Rancho Palos Verdes since 1979, said that the number of whales that she and her volunteers observed the migration of the North this spring and the swimming of the south of last winter is the lowest ever recorded.
“We have not seen a single calf in southern direction, which has never occurred for 40 years,” she said.
Schulman-Janiger and other researchers do not know why the whales die, although they and others believe that this could come from the lack of food based on the exhausted conditions in which certain whales have been found.
The gray whales of the North North Pacific sail on the Pacific coast each year while migrating 6,000 miles north of the Baja peninsula to their food field in summer in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic regions. There, the Léviathans are full of crustaceans and amphipods that live in the muddy sediments of the seas of Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort, before returning to the south to lounge, cavort and mingle in soft Mexican waters.
Animals migrate through a glove of perils while navigating in some of the most shipped regions in the world, maneuvering through fishing lines and thrown equipment, pods of killers waiting to tear defenseless calves and swim in polluted waters by microplastics, toxic chemicals and toxic algae.
Most of the time, most of the trip makes the trip very well.
But in 2019, a large number of whales began to die.
From this spring, the biologists of the Laguna San Ignacio research station recorded around 80 dead whales in Mexican waters and only 41 pairs of Calf mothers in the lagoon. They also noticed – using photographs and drone images – that about a quarter of the animals were “meager”.
“You can see it in photographs,” said Schulman-Janiger, who described lean whales as looking like a neck because a thick fat buffer which generally covers the area behind the skull has disappeared. “And you can see their shoulder blades,” she said, referring to animal shoulder blades.
“You shouldn't see the shoulder blades,” she said.
Then, while the hungry whales migrate north in 2019, a large number began to manage on the beaches of California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska. At the end of this year, the researchers had documented 216 died whales on the beaches and near the riveted waters of the North American coast of the Pacific.
A federal survey of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on what is known as an unexplained event of mortality was launched in 2019. The survey allowed scientists from several disciplines and institutions to collect and share knowledge to determine the cause of death.
The cause of deaths has never been definitively established, and the investigation was closed in 2023 because the number of thieves fell into a range considered normal. Many researchers concluded that a change in the availability of arctic and sub-Arctic foods (via massive climate changes) was the engine factor. Their evaluation was supported by the Observations of malnutrition and the range in whales and similar events and observations in other Arctic animals, including birds, seals, crabs and fish.
They also noticed that many of the Whales had started to feed in the areas – Like the Bay of San Francisco And the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach – where such behaviors had never been seen before.
Over the past two weeks, several gray whales have been observed in the Bay of San Francisco, including an almost new record in a single day. Food behavior reports have also been made, especially off the city of Pacifica.
When asked if the NOAA researchers note these observations concerning and anticipate the possibility of another death, Michael Milstein, agency spokesperson, said that the number of sechanges along the Pacific coast is still low – seven in California and one in Washington. The annual average is around 35.
He said it was too early on the north trip of the whales, namely with certainty.
John Calambokidis, main research biologist and co-founder of the Cascadia Research Collective, a research center for marine mammals based in Olympia, Washington, agreed with Milstein: “We are simply entering our main period of shutters (April to June), therefore a little early to draw conclusions.”
And despite Schulman -Janiger's concerns, she also said that she was early – and that the Niña Ocean conditions could be partly to blame for the small number of animals observed so far.
She said that Mexico's reports indicate that many gray whales have migrated further south than they generally do, and were seen swimming in the Gulf of California – off the coast of Loreto, Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta.
The gray whales swim from Alaska to Baja California, where they mate and give birth.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
She said it was good news if the low accounts are due to whales that are just late. But worrying if the whales stressed by food should rank on an additional 800 miles until their trip.
“It's a very strange year for gray whales, and a worrying year given their bodily state, sequestrades and very low estimates of the calf,” she said.
