Tuesday, 28 July 2026, 1:53
Pacific gray whales are facing a catastrophic mortality event, with 145 fatal strandings reported along the West Coast this year—including at least 20 in California and 13 in Alaska—environmentalists warned this week, citing NOAA-linked data. The organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) sounded the alarm upon the release of the latest data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, 60 whales have died along the West Coast so far this year, with many deaths reported in Washington state and the San Francisco Bay area, though Southern California has also seen whale fatalities.
As of July 6, 2026, 145 gray whale stranding deaths have been reported, a rate already exceeding yearly totals recorded during the last three years of the declared 'Unusual Mortality Event,' PEER stated. Between 2006 and 2023, an average of 43 strandings were reported annually. But the statistic saw a big spike in 2025 of 179 strandings, a number which may be surpassed in 2026, the statement said. Last year, 179 gray whales were found dead. If the current trend continues, 2026 could be one of the deadliest years on record for the large baleen whales, second only to 2019, when 122 whales were reported dead.
The number of whales that wash ashore represents only a fraction of the total deaths, PEER explained. Experts estimate that for every whale found at the coastline, between 7 and 25 others die at sea. Using a conservative ratio of 9-to-1 for the 145 observed stranded whales so far in 2026, another 1,305 may have died offshore, making the true total mortality rate likely around 1,450. For the 324 stranded mortalities reported in 2025 and so far in 2026, total gray whale mortalities could range from 2,268 to 8,100. Scientists consider this a Catastrophic Mortality Event.
California has seen at least 20 gray whale strandings in 2026, with recent incidents including a gray whale that washed up on an Oxnard-area beach in May 2026. Ventura and Los Angeles counties have reported multiple dead whales in recent months, highlighting the ongoing crisis along the Southern California coast. In February, a 30-foot dead humpback whale washed ashore near 11th Street in Newport Beach.
The gray whale population declined by nearly 30% between 2019 and 2023, from an estimated 20,500 to 14,526. By 2025, the estimate shrunk to 13,000 individuals—the smallest since the 1970s, down from the 27,000 individuals estimated in 2016. Last year, NOAA scientists estimated the eastern North Pacific population of gray whales at around 13,000 — less than half of a high of about 27,000 animals a decade ago. The agency hasn’t yet released its population estimate for this year. Between 2019 and 2023, scientists declared an Unusual Mortality Event marked by 690 strandings and low birth rates, with starvation and vessel strikes as common causes. Diminishing Arctic sea ice disrupts the food web: algae that thrives on ice drops to the sea floor, feeding crustaceans that gray whales eat. As ice shrinks, so does the feast. In recent years, coastal waters near Kodiak and Sitka have been seeing more gray whales than they used to — hundreds instead of dozens. Scientists suspect they’re looking for new sources of food. There is some evidence gray whales can shift their diet, switching from benthic amphipods to small fishes like Arctic cod in the water column. The whales that wash up are emaciated, and the scientific consensus is that they are starving due to a loss of access to food sources driven by the dramatic reduction in sea ice around Alaska due to climate change. David Weller, a NOAA marine biologist, said in an agency release: “The environment may now be changing at a pace or in ways that is testing the time-honored ability of the population to rapidly rebound while it adjusts to a new ecological regime.”
According to NOAA Fisheries, the eastern North Pacific gray whale population was estimated at 25,000 to 30,000 animals in 2016, one of the highest estimates since surveys began in 1967. However, the Unusual Mortality Event (UME) from December 2018 through November 2023, driven by ecosystem changes in Arctic feeding areas, led to reduced food availability, malnutrition, fewer calves, and increased mortality. By the winter of 2022/2023, the population estimate had fallen to approximately 13,300 to 16,000 whales, comparable to numbers in the late 1960s. Since the UME was closed in 2023, abundance estimates have fluctuated, reaching a low of approximately 11,700 to 14,200 whales in 2024/2025 before an apparent increase to between 15,930 and 20,530 whales in 2025/2026. The apparent increases exceed expected growth rates for baleen whales and have occurred during periods of low calf production, suggesting that factors other than births and deaths—such as changes in migration patterns—may be affecting the number of whales counted off central California. NOAA Fisheries conducts shore-based surveys at Granite Canyon south of Monterey, California, using visual observers, infrared cameras, and fixed-wing drones to count southbound gray whales from December through February. These surveys, which began in 1967, combine new and established methods to estimate abundance. The recent apparent increase is encouraging, but low calf production since 2019 raises concerns about population resilience amid ongoing environmental changes in Arctic and sub-Arctic feeding grounds.
PEER has long lobbied federal officials to take action, including establishing Whale Safety Zones to prevent ship strikes and relisting Pacific gray whales as a federally endangered species. The species was removed from the list in 1994. PEER Science Policy Director Kyla Bennet said, 'Despite mounting threats, NOAA has yet to take any affirmative action to protect the gray whale. Further inaction by NOAA will push the West Coast population of gray whales into an extinction spiral.'
Alaska marine ecologist and PEER Board of Directors Chairman Rick Steiner said the data was deeply worrying. "The gray whale appears to be suffering its second Catastrophic Mortality Event this decade," he said. "The loss of thousands of whales in just two years from a population at significant risk should be of concern to us all." Diminishing sea ice at high northern latitudes may be contributing to the decline, according to Steiner. "Gray whales seem to be starving, as Arctic sea ice decline is reducing their Arctic seabed prey resource," he said. "As we seek to reduce carbon emissions to mitigate this long-term threat, other shorter-term threats to these whales must also be reduced, including ship strikes, oil spills, entanglement in fishing gear, harmful algal blooms, microplastic pollution, ocean noise, disturbance, and the harvest in Russia." The massive mammals migrate between 10,000 and 14,000 miles every year, traveling from calving lagoons off the coast of Baja California to Arctic feeding grounds. The lengthy journeys make them particularly vulnerable to injury from "increasingly large and fast commercial shipping," the statement added.
Last August, Steiner petitioned NOAA to relist the gray whale, which would offer the species more legal protections and recovery efforts. Typically, NOAA takes 90 days after a petition is filed to decide whether to pursue listing the species or not, but it’s been almost a year. Steiner said if NOAA doesn’t propose relisting the species next month, the issue will end up in court. Michael Milstein, a spokesperson for NOAA Fisheries, told KTOO that the agency would only consider declaring another “unusual mortality event” if there were new reasons why so many whales have turned up dead. “At this point, elevated strandings have continued, but all indications are that the causes remain the same,” he said in an email. Milstein said in an email that NOAA is still evaluating the petition and does not have a timeline on its decision.
California has ship speed reduction zones in areas known to have higher gray whale concentrations, and though the program is voluntary, many ships do reduce their speed, and some station spotters to look out for whales. Those have reduced whale ship strike deaths in the region by about 50%. Oregon, Washington and Alaska have not implemented similar programs because of shipping industry opposition, but advocates are pushing for action. To help reduce ship strikes, the Center for Biological Diversity is urging the U.S. Coast Guard to implement a mandatory 10-knot speed limit in areas with high whale activity. The organization also supports wider use of "pop-up gear," a type of fishing equipment designed without dangling ropes that can entangle whales.
Steiner noted that the Trump administration is increasing oil drilling in the region, which creates more pollution and threats. He also said that Indigenous populations in Russia hunt the whales, killing up to 40 annually, and that the groups claim the hunt is for subsistence, but the whale meat is actually fed to livestock. A NOAA response to the petition to relist the gray whales under the ESA is due in about a month, and if the Trump administration ignores it or rejects the request, then PEER will sue. The second Trump administration has so far not listed an animal on the endangered or threatened list, and it has taken unprecedented steps to try to dismantle the ESA. Steiner said the science was so clear on the issue, and the whales were “immensely” popular in the US west, so he is hopeful that the gray whale will be the administration’s first listing. “The gray whales are in dire straits, so hopefully they see that and this can be the first one they list,” Steiner said.
Ship strikes and other human activities are considered contributing factors. Last year, 24 whale deaths were attributed to ship strikes, and 33 whales were found entangled in fishing gear. Experts said the actual number of affected whales is likely higher. Several of the dead whales also showed signs of poor nutrition. Experts said warming temperatures in the Arctic are affecting the ecosystem where many whales feed, reducing prey availability and forcing the animals to travel through areas with increased human activity.
"There's much less prey for them, so they've undertaken this huge, long migration, and now they're on their way back up to Alaska, but they're looking for food, and they're pretty desperate, so they're ending up in these areas where there's lots of ships, and there's lots of fishing gear they have to traverse," said Oceans Program Director Miyoko Sakashita. "It's almost a deadly maze that they have to make it through."
John Calambokidis, a biologist and co-founder of the nonprofit Cascadia Research Collective, tells Spectrum News 1 SoCal’s Maryssa Rillo that all the whales are thin, some extremely emaciated, and he feels something “catastrophic” happening with the animals.
Conservationists are optimistic that gray whales may be able to survive by shifting their diet. They’ve been spotted in growing numbers in coastal waters near Kodiak and Sitka, Alaska, where scientists think they might be searching for new food sources. It’s possible they could be “switching from the benthic little bugs—the amphipods that live in the seabed sediment—to small fishes like Arctic cod up in the water column,” Steiner tells KTOO.
Gray whales have rebounded from crises in the past. They were hunted to the brink of extinction during the heyday of commercial whaling but, following the still-in-place global moratorium, they recovered enough to be removed from the U.S. federal endangered species list in 1994. The species also bounced back after an unusual mortality event in 1999 and 2000. But this time, experts worry the creatures may not be able to adapt quickly enough.
“The environment may now be changing at a pace or in ways that is testing the time-honored ability of the population to rapidly rebound while it adjusts to a new ecological regime,” David Weller, director of the Marine Mammal and Turtle Division at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center, said in a statement last year.
In the meantime, advocates are calling on the federal government to re-list gray whales under the Endangered Species Act. “Right now, [gray whales] are barometers of ocean health,” Bianca Perla, science director of the nonprofit Vashon Nature Center in Washington, tells the Seattle Times’ Aspen Anderson. “They’re telling us something’s going wrong because they’re not
The gray whale crisis demands urgent action to reduce ship strikes, protect Arctic feeding grounds, and relist the species. Without intervention, the Pacific population may face irreversible decline.
