Gray whale strandings surge, Whidbey Island records two deaths

Two dead gray whales have washed up on Whidbey Island since July 2025, putting Island County directly inside a coastwide die-off that has already reached 30 strandings in Washington this year. That is the second-highest annual total in five decades of monitoring, trailing only 2019, when the state counted 34 strandings.

The pattern is part of a broader collapse. In examined whales, the most common finding has been malnutrition, sometimes with internal trauma consistent with vessel strike. John Calambokidis said this is the seventh year since 2019 in which gray whales have experienced elevated mortality, and he warned that the population has fallen by roughly half over the past decade while calf production has reached record lows.

On April 16, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife warned that multiple gray whales had already stranded that month on the Washington coast, the highest number recorded that early in spring, and reminded crabbers about whale-safe fishing practices and stranding reports. NOAA Fisheries first declared the West Coast strandings an Unusual Mortality Event on May 30, 2019, after more than 60 gray whales had stranded in California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska. That event later ran from December 17, 2018, through November 9, 2023, setting a grim benchmark for the current season.

Calambokidis said the age and sex pattern is also unusual. About two-thirds of the dead whales found in Washington have been adult males, when population trouble more often shows up first in calves. He said that could mean the species is not producing enough young in the first place, a warning that points to a deeper reproductive problem. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility is pressing NOAA to act on a 2023 petition aimed at reducing ship strikes and to restore gray whales to the federal endangered species list.

Beachgoers can encounter a carcass on public shoreline at any time, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife says stranded, injured or dead marine mammals should be reported to the West Coast Marine Mammal Stranding Network hotline. The state lists gray whales as Sensitive, and its 2021 periodic review estimated the Eastern North Pacific population at about 20,580 animals in winter 2019-20, down 23.7% from 26,960 in 2016. The same review put the small Pacific Coast Feeding Group at about 232 whales.