Marine Biologist John Calambokidis spoke at the Duwamish Longhouse at 4705 W Marginal Way Southwest on Thursday June 17 on "Gray Whales and Other Whales of the Pacific Northwest." He is the biologist who performed the necropsy on the gray whale that recently stranded on The Arroyos Beach and among his findings was that the contents of the whale's stomach was "the largest amount of trash ever recorded in a stranded whale in the Puget Sound," though this did not cause the death of this whale and that the death of Gray Whales in their range is not uncommon. Their report is here.

Calambokidis showed a series of slides and some video and one listed what they found including "50 gallons of undigested contents, mostly algae but 3.2 lbs were "human debris, including plastic bag material, fabrics (including a leg of sweatpants), fishing line, golf ball, duct tape and a juice pouch. 15 oz of the total debris were plastic bag pieces alone." He said this indicated that the whale had clearly been feeding in the waters in and near Puget Sound to have picked up this much debris. Gray whales are filter feeders, scooping material from the sea floor that contains their prey, most commonly Krill, a shrimp-like marine invertebrate animal or in our waters near Camano Island as he pointed out, a species known as Ghost Shrimp. Whales have a structure called baleen "a dense seive like matt that will filter out anything passing through it," he said. They force their tongues against the roof of their mouths forcing the water out and swallowing what remains.

As a senior research biologist for Cascadia Research he has served as project director for over 100 projects since 1984 and has authored two books including The Guide to Marine Mammals of Greater Puget Sound. His talk covered primarily three species; Gray Whales, Humpback Whales and Blue Whales.

Despite decades of research there is still a great deal that is unknown about whales. This is partially because of the difficulty of doing research on animals who spend most of their time underwater and in the open ocean. He also said that even though there is high public interest, marine mammals have not received very much research attention. A lot of the knowledge we have actually came from scientists who accompanied whaling vessels.

Calambokidis however did bring the results of the more advanced research that has been possible only in the last few years. He showed with slides and video how researchers attach instruments that record video (even some with lights) and other data using suction cups that naturally detach after a brief period to later be found through built in radio transmitters and the data recovered. His video showed how whales will, through 'negative buoyancy' dive to depths of 1000 feet or more, through layers of Krill, and then, perhaps using their eyesight or means we don't understand, surge up from the deep to take a massive mouthful of prey.

His talk included whale migration patterns and the fact that some whales do not migrate but rather stay near reliable food sources. He spoke about whale populations still recovering even though commercial whaling in this country ended in 1966.

Gray Whales average about six deaths per year in their range. "The whales that we find washed up dead in Washington State are what we call 'Strandings" and these are animals that typically have died at sea and washed up dead though occasionally they come ashore alive and die shortly thereafter like this one in West Seattle," he said.

The years 1999 and 2000 saw a "Major Mortality Event, not just in Washington State," he said, " but throughout their range from Mexico, to California, Oregon, on up into Alaskan waters. In those two years huge numbers of Gray Whales were documented as dying. Somewhere close to a thousand animals were found throughout that range." During that period the total population was estimated to be 23,000. Given that not all whales that died were recorded, it was estimated that approximately 6000 whales died during that event.

Most of the whales that died in this period were extremely emaciated. This indicated he said that this was likely the result of the recovery of the Gray Whale population after whaling ceased, reaching historic proportions and it appears there were "large scale variations in the prey base", in other words their food became harder to find.

The talk was presented by a local organization called the Whale Trail whose Executive Director Donna Sandstrom said, "The story of the Gray Whales represents a tremendous shift in how we thought about the whales and our relationship with them. They almost went extinct. They were heavily hunted. But all the marine mammals became protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 they all recovered, except for the Gray Whales on the east coast which did go extinct. The saddest thing for us locally that the southern resident orcas are endangered so we have a tremendous impact on whether those whales survive. The things we put down our drains, how we take care of the salmon habitat directly impacts whether these whales are going to be extinct or not."

What would happen if the whales disappeared?

"Frankly we don't know," Calambokidis said," so the best we can do is to look at a species like the otter that was impacted by pollution and then later reintroduced and we saw the amazing role they played in the ecosystem."