Gray whale that swam 20 miles up Washington state river found dead
A juvenile gray whale that stunned Washington state residents after swimming 20 miles into a small river has been 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 dwindles.
The whale was discovered Saturday near Raymond, Washington, in the Willapa River, which flows 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 their births in Baja California, Mexico, north to feeding grounds in Alaska.
The larger problem facing the eastern Pacific Ocean gray whale population since 2019 is reduced food availability in the northern Bering and Chukchi Seas off the coast of Alaska, John Calambokidis, a research biologist at the Cascadia Research Collective, told The Associated Press on Sunday.
“Grey whales are facing a major crisis, the heart of which appears 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 — that is, those in the eastern Pacific — from late 2018 to late 2023. There were 690 gray whale strandings during that period, stretching from Alaska to Mexico.
NOAA Fisheries investigators concluded that the preliminary cause was “localized ecosystem changes in the feeding grounds of subarctic and Arctic whales, which resulted in changes in food intake, malnutrition, decreased birth rates, and increased mortality.”
Officials thought the population was rebounding, but the most recent count, from 2025, instead showed a continuing decline. The federal agency estimates the number of gray whales at around 13,000, the lowest number since the 1970s.
“A lot of these gray whales look very emaciated, very thin,” Calambokidis said.
Their northward migration is typically the hardest time for gray whales, the longest period they go without eating, forcing the animals to deplete their nutritional reserves.
“When this happens, you often see gray whales looking more desperately for new areas to feed,” Calambokidis said. “This is the most likely context for this whale.”
Researchers will attempt to examine the whale, perhaps as early as Monday.
It entered the North Fork of the Willapa River on Wednesday, via a bay about 185 miles (298 kilometers) southwest of Seattle. Locals flocked to bridges along the river just to catch a glimpse of the huge mammal and flooded social media with photos and videos of it expelling air from its blowhole.
Although the gray whale appeared thin, it behaved normally and did not appear to have any injuries, the Cascadia Research Collective, a nonprofit organization, said in a Facebook post.
The organization was giving the whale time and space to leave the river on its own, but when researchers tried to find it Friday, the animal had traveled further upstream into waters not navigable by boat, Calambokidis said.
