Increased Gray Whale Deaths in Spring 1999

© 1999 by Linda Moulton Howe

June 8, 1999 Newport, Oregon ­ In the first four months of 1999, 65 gray whales have died during their migration from the west coast of Baja California. There, they give birth in warm water and then travel back north toward the colder Bering Sea to feed on amphipod crustaceans. Seventeen gray whales died in the past five weeks in Puget Sound, Washington. Nearly all the dead whales have been adult females who look like they have starved to death.