A juvenile gray whale that amazed Washington state residents after it swam 20 miles up a small river was found dead, and an official with a marine mammal research group suspects hunger may have driven the whale to new hunting grounds as the species’ population declines.
The whale was discovered Saturday near Raymond, Washington, in the Willapa River, which feeds into the ocean at Willapa Bay. A number of gray whales are currently in the bay on their 5,000 mile (8,000 kilometer) spring migration from birthing rounds in Baja California, Mexico, north to feeding grounds in Alaska.
The larger issue that the population of gray whales in the eastern part of the Pacific Ocean has been facing since 2019 is reduced food availability in the northern Bering and Chukchi seas off Alaska’s coast, John Calambokidis, a research biologist with the Cascadia Research Collective, told The Associated Press on Sunday.
“Gray whales are facing a major crisis and the heart of it does seem to be feeding on their prey in the Arctic,” he said.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries agency declared an unusual mortality event for eastern gray whales — meaning those in the eastern Pacific — from late 2018 to late 2023. It involved 690 gray whale strandings during that time, stretching from Alaska to Mexico.
NOAA Fisheries investigators concluded the preliminary cause was “localized ecosystem changes in the whales’ sub-Arctic and Arctic feeding areas that led to changes in food, malnutrition, decreased birth rates and increases mortality.”
Officials believed the population was rebounding, but the most recent count from 2025 instead showed a continuing decline. The federal agency estimated about 13,000 gray whales, the lowest count since the 1970s.
“A lot of these gray whales are looking very emaciated, very thin,” Calambokidis said.
Their migration north is typically the most challenging period for gray whales, the longest they’ve gone without eating, forcing the animals to use up their nutritional reserves.
“When that happens, you often see gray whales in a more desperate search for new areas to feed,” Calambokidis said. “That’s the most likely context for this whale.”
Researchers will attempt to examine whale, possibly as soon as Monday.
It entered the north fork of the Willapa River on Wednesday, via a bay about 185 miles (298 kilometers) southwest of Seattle. Residents gathered on bridges along the river just to catch glimpses of the massive mammal and flooded social media with photos and video of it expelling air through its blowhole.
While the gray whale appeared thin, it was behaving normally and didn’t appear to have any injuries, the non-profit Cascadia Research Collective said in a Facebook post.
The organization was giving the whale time and space to leave the river on its own, but when researchers attempted to find it Friday, the animal had travelled further upriver into waters that were unnavigable by boat, Calambokidis said.