Four grey whales have been washed ashore in the San Francisco Bay Area in nine days. This includes one struck by a ship on Thursday. “It’s alarming to respond to four dead grey whales in just over a week because it really puts into perspective the current challenges faced by this species,” says Dr Padraig Duignan, the director of pathology at the Marine Mammal Centre told AP. The other three whales could have died of starvation, but experts haven’t been able to point to an exact cause.
On March 31, an adult female grey whale washed ashore San Francisco’s Crissy Field, while another adult female was found on April 4 in Moss Beach in San Mateo County. A third one was found floating on Wednesday near the Berkeley Marina.
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Grey whales are known to migrate from cooler climes to mate and birth calves near the coast of Baja, California. 13 whales washed ashore in the Bay Area in 2019. Experts say the animals would have been starving and therefore, could not complete migrating to Alaska from off the Mexican coast.
“This many dead whales in a week is shocking, especially because these animals are the tip of the iceberg,” said Kristen Monsell, the legal director of the Centre for Biological Diversity’s Oceans program. The whale population has been declining quickly; they aren’t an endangered species yet.
Experts fear that the washed whales might just be a lower number, with the rest of them sinking to the sea, unnoticed. Another reason for whales perishing could be getting entangled in fishing gear.
