LAPUSH — Gray whales have returned to the Washington coast.
“They’re here now,” Karsten Boysen, information and education officer with Quileute Natural Resources in LaPush, said Wednesday.
“There are whales 50 feet off the beach that are spouting and rolling in the surf,” he said.
The massive animals have been spotted off LaPush regularly for the last three weeks as they migrate north past coastal beaches here to their main Arctic feeding grounds in the Bering and Chukchi seas.
The whales, often called “California” gray whales, left their breeding grounds along Mexico’s Baja California peninsula last month to begin their annual migration.
Most of this year’s 26,000 migratory whales will pass the north Pacific coast from now through April. They can be seen off the Washington coast as late as June.
The Forks Chamber of Commerce is installing a Web camera this week on First Beach in LaPush to post pictures on the Internet every 30 seconds displaying weather and whale-watching conditions, Schostak said.
The Web cam will be available soon at www.forkswa.com.
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