{"id":301218,"date":"2026-05-05T19:05:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T19:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/301218\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T19:05:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T19:05:11","slug":"coastal-waters-from-mendocino-to-san-francisco-bay-have-become-a-graveyard-for-gray-whales-the-mendocino-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/301218\/","title":{"rendered":"Coastal waters from Mendocino to San Francisco Bay have become a graveyard for gray whales \u2022 The Mendocino Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"

MENDOCINO CO., 5\/5\/26 \u2014 The 40-foot male gray whale on RCA Beach had drifted past Tiburon on March 28, slid through the Golden Gate on a strong tide, and washed ashore in Bolinas the night of April 1. By the next afternoon, a team from the Marine Mammal Center and the California Academy of Sciences was on the sand in waders and elbow-length gloves, racing the next tide for samples \u2014 bone saws and meat hooks against the foul stench one writer compared to \u201ca refrigerator left for weeks without power.\u201d<\/p>\n

They were looking for trauma. <\/p>\n

Maggie Martinez, a veterinary pathologist who lacks a sense of smell, worked the gastrointestinal tract. \u201cThey tell us what and how much they are eating and if they\u2019ve been exposed to any algal bloom toxins,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cI\u2019m also grabbing a couple of tissues, like blubber and muscle, to try to look for trauma.\u201d <\/p>\n

Two weeks earlier, the same team had performed the same workup on the body of an adult female towed to a remote stretch of Angel Island; the Marine Mammal Center later classified that death as a suspected vessel strike. By Earth Day, at least nine gray whales had been found dead in Bay Area waters in 2026 \u2014 already on pace to challenge last year\u2019s grim ledger of 24 dead whales, 21 of them grays, the highest tally in a quarter century. <\/p>\n

Twelve days after the Bolinas necropsy, a paper landed in Frontiers in Marine Science that put the carcasses in context. Sonoma State graduate student Josephine Slaathaug and a team from the Marine Mammal Center and the California Academy of Sciences had spent the better part of a year matching photographs of living whales to photographs of dead ones. Their conclusion: at least 18% of the gray whales that have entered San Francisco Bay since 2018 have died there, and of those whose cause of death could be determined, more than 40% showed evidence of pre-mortem vessel trauma. Among the carcasses that received full internal necropsies, 60% bore the signature of a strike. <\/p>\n

In fact, Slaathaug and her collaborators believe the real mortality rate is closer to half.\u201d <\/p>\n

Gray whales have a low profile to the water when they surface, and this makes them difficult to see in conditions like fog, which are common to San Francisco Bay,\u201d Slaathaug explained in the study\u2019s release. \u201cAdditionally, San Francisco Bay is a highly trafficked waterway, and the Golden Gate Strait serves as a bottleneck through which all traffic and whales must enter and exit.\u201d <\/p>\n

Co-author Bekah Lane, of the Center for Coastal Studies, was blunter. \u201cIn San Francisco Bay, the biggest threat to these whales is vessel traffic,\u201d Lane said. \u201cRoute changes and speed restrictions have been found to significantly reduce vessel strike mortality to large whales.\u201d <\/p>\n

So why, with the science increasingly settled, are speed restrictions in the Bay and along the northern California coast still optional? <\/p>\n

The science on speed <\/p>\n

The science on vessel speed has been settled for almost two decades. A 2007 study in Marine Mammal Science established the dose-response curve every regulator now cites: at eight knots, a ship strike has about a one-in-six chance of killing a large whale; at fifteen, it is almost certain. Each additional knot of speed multiplies the odds of a fatal outcome roughly one and a half times. <\/p>\n

In 2008, NOAA imposed mandatory 10-knot zones around North Atlantic right whale habitat on the East Coast. A follow-up analysis cut fatal-strike risk by 80 to 90 percent. The West Coast has no equivalent rule. California\u2019s voluntary speed-reduction program, by the modeling of Cotton Rockwood at Point Blue Conservation Science, has cut blue and humpback strike deaths in the SF approaches by only 9 to 13 percent. <\/p>\n

\"\"A dead adult female gray whale is floating in San Francisco Bay in San Francisco, Calif., on March 29, 2026. The whale was first reported the evening of March 28, 2026, near Tiburon by the California Academy of Sciences, and was later seen east of Alcatraz Island before drifting toward the Golden Gate Strait due to tidal patterns. (Josie Slaathaug\/California Academy of Sciences\/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via Bay City News)<\/p>\n

A voluntary fix for a mandatory problem <\/p>\n

On Earth Day, April 22, California\u2019s signature whale-protection program \u2014 Protecting Blue Whales and Blue Skies \u2014 formally expanded statewide under Assembly Bill 14, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last fall. The Vessel Speed Reduction zone, in which ships of 300 gross tons or larger are asked to travel at 10 knots or less, now extends along the entire California coastline and farther offshore \u2014 including, for the first time, the migration corridor off the Mendocino and Sonoma coasts,<\/a> where the same gray whales transit twice a year past Bodega Head, Point Arena and Fort Bragg en route to and from the Arctic. The waters off Point Arena have produced their own gray whale strandings in recent years, including a carcass that washed up there in April 2020, cause undetermined. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a really big and positive step forward in maximizing whale protection in California,\u201d said Jessica Morten, director of marine resource protection at the California Marine Sanctuary Foundation, who has worked on the program for a decade. The expansion, she said, was overdue: \u201cWe\u2019ve implemented the program mostly near shore in recent years, and now we\u2019re expanding to cover offshore habitat important to those migratory species.\u201d <\/p>\n

Cooperation has been climbing \u2014 52 shipping companies enrolled for the 2026 season, up from 44 last year. But participation outside those zones is uneven, there are no penalties for opting out, and the bottleneck inside the Golden Gate, where Slaathaug\u2019s whales are dying, sits largely outside the offshore VSR map. <\/p>\n

The federal regulatory architecture for the SF approaches has been in legal limbo since 2022, when a federal court vacated NOAA\u2019s biological opinion supporting the existing shipping lanes \u2014 finding the agency\u2019s conclusion that the lanes posed no risk of \u201ctake\u201d to whales and turtles \u201cdefies logic.\u201d Three years later, the court-ordered replacement analysis still hadn\u2019t materialized. In October 2025, the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth sued NOAA and the Coast Guard a second time. That case is live in the Northern District of California. <\/p>\n

What the Coast Guard already does \u2014 and what it can\u2019t <\/p>\n

In the meantime, the closest thing the Bay has to a real-time response runs out of the Coast Guard\u2019s Vessel Traffic Service in San Francisco. When a whale is reported, VTS broadcasts the sighting to commercial mariners and asks them to slow down. When concentrations build along ferry routes, VTS coordinates with operators to reroute around them \u2014 most often east of Angel Island, last year\u2019s hot spot. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis year, gray whales have been migrating into the bay \u2014 whether it be for food or rest,\u201d Gary Reed, the director of VTS San Francisco, told a newspaper. \u201cWhen whales are reported, the Coast Guard broadcasts their location to commercial vessels and asks them to slow down. Ferries can be rerouted when concentrations of whales appear along their fixed transit routes, but container ships are confined to the deep-draft channel. Large ships are constrained by their draft. Unless we spend billions and billions of dollars on dredging different channels, they can\u2019t deviate.\u201d <\/p>\n

That work happens with the existing VTS crew. There is no dedicated full-time staff for whale coordination, and the data flowing in is whatever a passing ship\u2019s bridge officer or a shore-based biologist happens to phone in. <\/p>\n

The Save Willy Act, introduced on Earth Day by Rep. Sam Liccardo, D-Campbell, with nine Bay Area cosponsors, would change that \u2014 funding a four-year pilot \u201cCetacean Desk\u201d inside VTS San Francisco with up to two full-time positions, mandated to integrate real-time data from NOAA, the Coast Guard, state agencies, academic research groups, tribes, and the much larger fleet of commercial and recreational boats already on the water. <\/p>\n

\u201cResearchers track these whales daily, but we can scale their impact by crowdsourcing data from the many more numerous commercial and recreational boats, and building a centralized alert system,\u201d Liccardo said in announcing the bill. \u201cA whale desk will protect these magnificent creatures and help mariners avoid costly, harrowing collisions. Together, let\u2019s Save Willy.\u201d <\/p>\n

Even the bill\u2019s supporters concede it is a coordination fix, not a regulatory one. It does not impose a mandatory speed limit inside the Bay. But it would put dedicated eyes inside the room where the broadcasts are made. <\/p>\n

\"\"Experts from The Marine Mammal Center and California Academy of Sciences conduct a necropsy on an adult male gray whale at Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County, Calif., on April 1, 2026. (Giancarlo Rulli\/The Marine Mammal Center\/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via Bay City News)<\/p>\n

Why this time may be different <\/p>\n

Giancarlo Rulli, the Marine Mammal Center\u2019s associate director of public relations and a 22-year volunteer at the Sausalito hospital, has been one of the most visible faces of the strandings response. In a phone interview this week, he made an argument that doesn\u2019t fit on a press release: the gray whale\u2019s storied resilience may be running out. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s gone through a mass mortality event before, in 1999, 2000, and recovered,\u201d Rulli said. \u201cOnly to have another one happen 20-plus years later. And in the years since, it is not recovering to the same degree, at all, that it did the first go around.\u201d <\/p>\n

NOAA\u2019s most recent population estimate puts Eastern North Pacific gray whales at roughly 13,000 \u2014 down from 27,000 in 2016, the lowest count since the 1970s. Calf production in 2025 was 85, the lowest since records began in 1994. The Center for Biological Diversity\u2019s October complaint cited \u201croughly 80 whales killed annually by vessel strikes on the West Coast.\u201d <\/p>\n

Gray whales make one of the longest migrations of any mammal \u2014 a 12,000-mile annual round trip between Arctic feeding grounds and the calving lagoons of Baja California. On the northbound leg, when they\u2019re funneling through California waters in February through May, many of them arrive lean. The working theory among the biologists pulling the carcasses out of San Francisco Bay is that the whales now showing up inside the Golden Gate are hungry, and that the Bay \u2014 with its anchovy schools and ghost-shrimp-rich mudflats \u2014 looks like an emergency rest stop. The most visible evidence is the muddy plumes that surface as a whale rolls onto its right side and suction-feeds the bottom. Whether the whales are actually getting enough is another question. <\/p>\n

Rulli said the Center is now actively trying to put extra eyes on the water in real time and is exploring whether individual whales might be tagged with location devices to help vessels avoid them. \u201cPost-release tracking devices that we would typically use, like maybe an endangered species we\u2019re caring for at our Sausalito hospital, cost anywhere between three and five-plus thousand dollars a pop,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd so, again, that\u2019s where funding, resources, come into play. When we\u2019re talking about two nonprofits that are doing everything we can, additional funding to assist not only on research but protective safety action is really critical.\u201d <\/p>\n

That, he said, is why the Marine Mammal Center has formally endorsed the Save Willy Act and the proposed cetacean desk inside the Coast Guard\u2019s vessel-traffic service. <\/p>\n

Whether grays are gaining real nutritional benefit from foraging in the Bay remains an open question even at the agency that pulls the carcasses. \u201cWe just don\u2019t know, in terms of how much true sustenance they\u2019re gaining by foraging in San Francisco Bay,\u201d Rulli said. \u201cThere are other research groups that are looking at the content itself of what we\u2019ve been able to gather in necropsy from stomach contents to try to decipher what\u2019s being foraged on, likely small crustaceans and invertebrates. And just how much, if any, sustenance they\u2019re gaining in terms of how much they\u2019re eating, and is it overall improving their body condition? That\u2019s something that we don\u2019t have answers to at this point.\u201d <\/p>\n

Whale Smart and the gap policy isn\u2019t closing <\/p>\n

In the absence of mandatory rules, Marine Mammal Center Director of Cetacean Conservation Biology Kathi George has been quietly building the next line of defense: a vessel-operator training program called Whale Smart, launched in February in partnership with the San Francisco Harbor Safety Committee\u2019s Marine Mammal Subcommittee, where George chairs the work group on vessel-strike risk. The program produces short-form training videos for professional mariners \u2014 Golden Gate Ferry, Blue & Gold Fleet, San Francisco Bay Ferry, City Cruises \u2014 on how to read whale behavior, recognize a \u201cblow,\u201d and slow down when the bay\u2019s fog burns off into the conditions where strikes happen. <\/p>\n

\u201cEvery action we take in San Francisco Bay matters,\u201d George said when the program launched. \u201cWhale Smart gives mariners the information they need to protect whales while maintaining safe and efficient operations, at a time when the species needs it most.\u201d <\/p>\n

It is the work that policy hasn\u2019t done yet \u2014 training operators because regulators won\u2019t compel them to slow down. <\/p>\n

Moe Flannery, the California Academy of Sciences\u2019 senior collections manager and a co-author on Slaathaug\u2019s paper, framed the stakes plainly to the BBC: \u201cIt\u2019s an immediate crisis that needs to be addressed, and this paper is just the first step in gathering the science that\u2019s needed to help inform conservation and management of this species that\u2019s in trouble.\u201d <\/p>\n

Back at RCA Beach, after the researchers had located the whale\u2019s ear plug \u2014 the waxy deposit that allows scientists to estimate age \u2014 and packed up their samples, the carcass was left to the tide. Forty feet of evidence, surrendered to the same open Pacific the whale had peeled off from to enter the bay. <\/p>\n

The next one is probably already on its way. <\/p>\n

Meet the named whales <\/p>\n

The 21 gray whales matched to carcasses in Slaathaug\u2019s study aren\u2019t statistics to the Marine Mammal Center\u2019s photo-identification team \u2014 many of them have names. A few you might recognize from photographs the Center has published over the past three migration seasons: <\/p>\n

Ladybug (TMMC-1-91) was photographed swimming against the San Francisco skyline on May 5, 2025. Less than four weeks later, on May 31, her carcass washed up in a rocky stretch near McNears Beach in San Rafael \u2014 too remote for a full necropsy. She is one of the live-then-dead matches that anchor the new study. <\/p>\n

Oreo (TMMC-1-66) was first spotted in 2023 by a Marine Mammal Center volunteer shore-watching from the Bay. She stayed 55 days \u2014 the second-longest period any individual gray whale has been observed inside the Golden Gate \u2014 and was photographed on 18 different days that year, often raising her flukes high before a deep dive, often surfacing in muddy plumes that suggested she was feeding on the bottom. She moved in the bottleneck between Alcatraz, Angel Island, and Treasure Island. <\/p>\n

\"\"TMMC-1-66, also known as \u201cOreo,\u201d swims in central San Francisco Bay in San Francisco, Calif., in an undated photo. The gray whale was one of several individuals documented in the bay as scientists study changing migration and feeding patterns. (Josephine Slaathaug\/The Marine Mammal Center\/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration \u2013 National Marine Fisheries Service via Bay City News)<\/p>\n

Semi-colon (TMMC-5) is named for a distinctive marking on his right side. First sighted at the Farallon Islands in summer 2021, he has returned to San Francisco Bay each spring since. In 2022 he became one of only seven gray whales documented feeding on anchovy in Pacifica \u2014 a behavior almost never seen in his species \u2014 using a side-swimming technique researchers had not previously catalogued in the Eastern North Pacific population. <\/p>\n

The catalog is, at heart, a way to keep score. Slaathaug\u2019s team identified 114 individual whales in San Francisco Bay between 2018 and 2025. Only four were seen in more than one year. Most of the rest, the researchers concluded, are using the Bay as an emergency feeding stop \u2014 and a dangerous one. <\/p>\n

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