By Peninsula Daily News services
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A type of whale that spends summers off Russia has made its way to Oregon coastal waters as part of a journey being tracked by scientists to better understand the behavior of the highly endangered animals.
Researchers attached a satellite tag to a 13-year-old, male western Pacific gray whale known as Flex on Oct. 4. The whale moved east across the Bering Sea and south through the Aleutian Islands into the Gulf of Alaska.
On Jan. 27, it was detected about 400 miles off the coast of British Columbia.
Researchers lost the signal and feared the satellite tag had fallen off but picked it up five days later, said Bruce Mate, director of Oregon
State University’s Marine Mammal Institute, which is working on the tracking project with the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
“It appears to have been because of bad weather,” Mate said Monday of the lapse.
Satellite signals confirmed the location of the whale 280 miles west of Vancouver Island. It moved from deep water off the continental shelf to shallow water off the northwest tip of Washington.
The whale kept swimming south at just more than 4 mph and on Monday was detected south of Lincoln City, Ore.
“That’s about 15 miles north of my laboratory at the Hatfield Marine Science Center,” Mate said, noting the irony of having to travel to Russia last year to tag the whale only to have it show up nearly at his doorstep.
The location is changing scientists’ perception for western Pacific gray whales but does not mean the entire stock heads east in winter.
“There may be other options,” Mate said, such as the South China Sea.
Only 130 of the western Pacific gray whales remain. The stock is genetically distinct from eastern Pacific gray whales that spend summers feeding off Alaska and winters breeding and giving birth off Mexico. About 18,000 of those whales remain.
Western Pacific gray whales are the second-most threatened species of large whales after North Pacific right whales.
Western Pacific gray whales spend summers near Sahkalin Island at the south end of the Sea of Okhotsk near Russia. Researchers last year had hoped to tag 12 of the animals, but they were limited by typhoons and gales but managed to tag Flex on their last day of field work.
Mate last month said researchers were assuming the whale was going to intersect the primary migratory pathway for eastern gray whales, which swim five to eight miles from shore.
“He’s out there twice as far,” Mate said.
Bad weather has prevented researchers from launching a boat to observe Flex, review his condition and see if he is traveling alone.
Satellite monitored radio tags have lasted as long as 385 days on a gray whale but average four months. The tag transmits four hours a day to conserve battery power.
The public can track the whale on Oregon State’s website: http://mmi.oregonstate.edu/Sakhalin2010
