The grays are in the bay
09/05/25 01:38
The whales are back in the bay! We heard about them before we saw them this year. We were coming up from the bay the day before yesterday, when a neighbor asked us if we had seen them. We had not. You have to be looking for them to see them. They are easy to spot when you know what you are looking for, but a pair of binoculars doesn’t hurt. I feel like an ancient whaler, tempted to shout with excitement, “Thar she blows!” What we see first is the blast of water as the whale exhales. Our bay is shallow and doesn’t attract other whales, but the grays are different.. They are baleen whales that feed on the bottom of shallow waters, sucking up mouthfuls of sediment and sifting out the ghost shrimp. They dig pits in the sand large enough to be seen on satellite images. Our bay offers plentiful shrimp for the visitors.
The whales need a lot of energy on a long trip. Their migration is among the longest of any mammal. In the fall, they travel south along the coast to protected lagoons along Baja California. They give birth to their calves in those protected waters, but food sources for the whales are insufficient for the adults. During the winter, adult grays survive on blubber stored during the previous summer. They can go 3 - 5 months without significant food resources. The females give birth and nurse their calves from stored fat. When the calves are old enough to travel, they head to their summer feeding grounds in the Bering Sea, visiting the shallow bays and intertidal areas of the Salish Sea along the way.
The grays that visit our bay are part of a group known as the sounders because of their frequent return to the Puget Sound. Grays can be spotted in the Sound between March and May, and some individuals spend two or three months in the area most years. Our bay has a healthy population of ghost shrimp, but the large mammals find the best supplies for only a couple of weeks before they move on to other areas for more feeding.
There once were healthy populations of grays in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, but the Atlantic population was hunted to extinction by the middle of the 18th century. Drilling for petroleum is not the first time human overconsumption of oil has caused environmental damage. In the Pacific, there are two populations of gray whales. The western North Pacific stock follow the coast of Asia while the eastern stock are the whales that migrate from Baja to the Bering Sea. Some of those eastern whales visit our bay. All gray whales were considered to be endangered, but the stock that follows the west coast of the United States was taken off the Endangered Species Act and is considered to be a healthy population with over 25,000 individuals. The western stock, in contrast, remains endangered with fewer than 200.
When it comes to seeing gray whales, we are in the right place, and their visit to our bay is a special treat.
We got our first glimpse of the whales for the year yesterday. We were walking along the berm around the bay, hoping to catch sight of them. We walked a mile or so and had turned around to walk back when we caught sight of the first blast. Once we saw it, we saw many others. Scientists have used drones to observe the whales. Mature adults dive nearly vertically in the shallow water. Sometimes their tails rise above the surface. As they go down to scoop the bottom, they exhale, making their bodies less buoyant. A ring of bubbles rises as the whale descends. After scooping the bottom, they rise to the surface, straining the shrimp as they blow out the sand while simultaneously exhaling through the two blowholes on the top of their head. The two towers of mist rising as they blow out blend into an oval that is easy to spot from a distance.
The main population of grays travels west of the San Juans, and most go up outside Vancouver Island. A dozen or so travel up the Strait of Georgia between us and the big island. Only a few individuals visit our bay. We can tell that there is more than one by the rhythm of their blows, but I don’t know how many there were in the small group we saw yesterday.
For someone who lived most of his life a thousand miles from the ocean, there is a lot to discover in our new home. We didn’t know about the grays and didn’t see them for the first years after we moved. Now we anticipate their return and look for them when spring comes. Since their lifespan is more than 50 years and individuals can live more than seventy, it is easy to imagine that we are being visited by old friends when they come to our bay to scoop shrimp.
When we lived in South Dakota, we didn’t plant our garden until after Memorial Day.. We knew spring blizzards were possible in the first half of May. We have been putting seeds in the ground and setting out bedding plants for weeks. The fruit trees are finished with blossoms, and the wisteria is showing off its best. The honeybees are out and about for nearly 12 hours a day now. It is a time of pleasant weather and lots of sunshine. I joke that the locals don’t tell visitors how pleasant the weather is here, preferring to talk about cloudy days and frequent rain showers to keep the beautiful weather all to themselves. May is a good time to visit the bay, whether you are a person searching for outdoor activities or a whale searching for shrimp after a long winter of short provisions. May is a good time for people who want to see whales to give us a visit and for us to be grateful for the visit of the whales.
The whales need a lot of energy on a long trip. Their migration is among the longest of any mammal. In the fall, they travel south along the coast to protected lagoons along Baja California. They give birth to their calves in those protected waters, but food sources for the whales are insufficient for the adults. During the winter, adult grays survive on blubber stored during the previous summer. They can go 3 - 5 months without significant food resources. The females give birth and nurse their calves from stored fat. When the calves are old enough to travel, they head to their summer feeding grounds in the Bering Sea, visiting the shallow bays and intertidal areas of the Salish Sea along the way.
The grays that visit our bay are part of a group known as the sounders because of their frequent return to the Puget Sound. Grays can be spotted in the Sound between March and May, and some individuals spend two or three months in the area most years. Our bay has a healthy population of ghost shrimp, but the large mammals find the best supplies for only a couple of weeks before they move on to other areas for more feeding.
There once were healthy populations of grays in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, but the Atlantic population was hunted to extinction by the middle of the 18th century. Drilling for petroleum is not the first time human overconsumption of oil has caused environmental damage. In the Pacific, there are two populations of gray whales. The western North Pacific stock follow the coast of Asia while the eastern stock are the whales that migrate from Baja to the Bering Sea. Some of those eastern whales visit our bay. All gray whales were considered to be endangered, but the stock that follows the west coast of the United States was taken off the Endangered Species Act and is considered to be a healthy population with over 25,000 individuals. The western stock, in contrast, remains endangered with fewer than 200.
When it comes to seeing gray whales, we are in the right place, and their visit to our bay is a special treat.
We got our first glimpse of the whales for the year yesterday. We were walking along the berm around the bay, hoping to catch sight of them. We walked a mile or so and had turned around to walk back when we caught sight of the first blast. Once we saw it, we saw many others. Scientists have used drones to observe the whales. Mature adults dive nearly vertically in the shallow water. Sometimes their tails rise above the surface. As they go down to scoop the bottom, they exhale, making their bodies less buoyant. A ring of bubbles rises as the whale descends. After scooping the bottom, they rise to the surface, straining the shrimp as they blow out the sand while simultaneously exhaling through the two blowholes on the top of their head. The two towers of mist rising as they blow out blend into an oval that is easy to spot from a distance.
The main population of grays travels west of the San Juans, and most go up outside Vancouver Island. A dozen or so travel up the Strait of Georgia between us and the big island. Only a few individuals visit our bay. We can tell that there is more than one by the rhythm of their blows, but I don’t know how many there were in the small group we saw yesterday.
For someone who lived most of his life a thousand miles from the ocean, there is a lot to discover in our new home. We didn’t know about the grays and didn’t see them for the first years after we moved. Now we anticipate their return and look for them when spring comes. Since their lifespan is more than 50 years and individuals can live more than seventy, it is easy to imagine that we are being visited by old friends when they come to our bay to scoop shrimp.
When we lived in South Dakota, we didn’t plant our garden until after Memorial Day.. We knew spring blizzards were possible in the first half of May. We have been putting seeds in the ground and setting out bedding plants for weeks. The fruit trees are finished with blossoms, and the wisteria is showing off its best. The honeybees are out and about for nearly 12 hours a day now. It is a time of pleasant weather and lots of sunshine. I joke that the locals don’t tell visitors how pleasant the weather is here, preferring to talk about cloudy days and frequent rain showers to keep the beautiful weather all to themselves. May is a good time to visit the bay, whether you are a person searching for outdoor activities or a whale searching for shrimp after a long winter of short provisions. May is a good time for people who want to see whales to give us a visit and for us to be grateful for the visit of the whales.
