TIMELINE<\/a><\/p>\nOf those deaths, more than half were at least partially attributed to malnutrition. That could have been the cause in more strandings, however, necropsies were not performed in roughly a dozen of the 30 strandings.<\/p>\n
Chandler said strong wind from the west this year has been contributing to why coastal towns are seeing a lot of whales and other things washing up on shore. However he also noted that many of the Grey whales washed ashore were emaciated with necropsies showing signs of malnourishment.<\/p>\n
“The food sources have been compromised. The warmer water means the nutrients that they’re getting aren’t as good, so the whole food chain is kind of not as healthy,” Chandler said.<\/p>\n
He pointed to the warming waters with climate change as the main reason noting that warm water plankton–Grey Whale’s main food source–is thinner and has fewer nutrients than plankton in cooler waters.<\/p>\n
Chandler says this whale will not have a necropsy done because of its level of decomposition. <\/p>\n
“The fresher ones, the team from Portland State [University] will come down and they’ll go in and do measurements, take samples and stuff, measurements of the internal organs. But on one this decayed, you won’t gain anything from it scientifically. And it’s just kind of a mess to do when they’re this rotten,” he said. <\/p>\n
KATU VAULT | The Exploding Whale of 1970: ‘Should a whale ever wash ashore again’Comment with Bubbles<\/p>\n
JOIN THE CONVERSATION (2)<\/p>\n
You can report a whale stranding to the West Coast Marine Mammal Stranding Network Hotline by calling 1-866-767-6114.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GEARHART, Ore. (KATU) \u2014 Another gray whale washed up on the Oregon coast last week, this time in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-720394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}