{"id":515859,"date":"2026-04-06T13:11:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T13:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/515859\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T13:11:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T13:11:08","slug":"gray-whale-dies-days-after-swimming-up-washingtons-willapa-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/515859\/","title":{"rendered":"Gray whale dies days after swimming up Washington&#8217;s Willapa River"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The whale, &#8220;although thin, was behaving normally,&#8221; the group said at the time, with no sign of injuries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Its teams had hoped the whale would find its own way out of the river but it failed to do so.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Gray whales undertake long spring time migrations north up the Pacific Coast to feed in the Arctic using up their nutritional reserves along the way, John Calambokidis, a research biologist with the Cascadia Research Collective, <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/gray-whale-dies-washington-river-ba070a4060f2f48f0e4533cc14b944b2\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told the Associated Press, external<\/a>. &#8220;When that happens, you often see gray whales in a more desperate search for new areas to feed,&#8221; he added. &#8220;That&#8217;s the most likely context for this whale.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Gray whales in the eastern part of the Pacific Ocean have faced reduced food availability in the northern Bering and Chukchi seas off Alaska&#8217;s coast in recent years, Calambokidis said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Gray whales are facing a major crisis and the heart of it does seem to be feeding on their prey in the Arctic,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The whale, &#8220;although thin, was behaving normally,&#8221; the group said at the time, with no sign of injuries.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-515859","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}