I received a call last Friday from Nicole Catalano of Pacific Environment, an environmental nonprofit focusing on marine conservation. An endangered gray whale was headed for California, she told me, and I could follow its movements online. “We expect it to be in California either now, or any day now,” Catalano said.
“Flex,” as researchers have named him, is one of an estimated 120 western Pacific gray whales. The highly endangered species has fared much worse than the related eastern gray whale, which has an estimated population of around 20,000.
The whale was tagged last October as part of a research project geared toward offering the mammoth creatures better safeguards against extinction. “They were going to tag many of them,” Catalano explained, but so far, Flex is the only whale researchers have succeeded in making contact with.
The Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University has created a website, updated weekly, to track Flex’s transoceanic journey. So far, he’s gone from Russia, to the Bering Sea, to the Gulf of Alaska, to the coast of Oregon, to the coast of California.
Researchers have been suprised by his progress, and don’t know what to expect next. “Flex’s route may or may not be typical of what western gray whales do — there could be three or four other whales from the western population making this same trip, or Flex could take an entirely different route next year,” said Bruce Mate, director of the Marine Mammal Institute.
The international environmental community’s interest in western Pacific gray whales stems in part from monitoring offshore oil and gas drilling near Russia, Catalano noted. Seismic testing for offshore development is known to impact marine mammals, and some of this activity is occurring nearby the whales’ feeding areas. In 2006, the Western Pacific Gray Whale Advisory Panel was convened by scientists to provide independent recommendations on how oil and gas companies can minimize risks to rare creatures.