Our Grey Whales Are Getting Smaller

There are several whale watching companies in our area and one of the treats they offer are Grey Whale sightings. Campbell River, Cortes and Quadra Islands are in the middle of a migration route. Thousands of Grey Whales pass through BC, en route to Alaska, during the Spring and return in the fall, while heading for the warm waters of Mexico’s Baja penninsula. Most appear to go by the West coast of Vancouver Island, but there are also sightings in our area. About 240 Grey Whales spend their entire summer feding in the shallow waters of BC and Washington state. They are often close enough to the shore to be seen from the land. However few people seem to have noticed that they are getting smaller.

A new study from Oregon State University found that the Grey Whales passing through their waters have been getting progressively smaller for the past 20 years. The average Grey Whale is now 13% smaller.

Scientists have not yet determined if Grey Whales are shrinking because of the state of the food web, or what effect this will have the health and reproductive success of the affected whales.

“This could be an early warning sign that the abundance of this population is starting to decline, or is not healthy,” said K.C. Bierlich, co-author on the study and an assistant professor at OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute in Newport. “And whales are considered ecosystem sentinels, so if the whale population isn’t doing well, that might say a lot about the environment itself.”

“In general, size is critical for animals,” said Enrico Pirotta, lead author on the study and a researcher at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “It affects their behavior, their physiology, their life history, and it has cascading effects for the animals and for the community they’re a part of.”

Scientists used the drone images of 130 Grey Whales whales, taken between 2016 and 2022. As this study heads into its ninth year, they are tyring to identify the environmental drivers that have caused this change in size