Whale That Swam 20 Miles Up Washington River Is Found Dead
The gray whale, which some locals affectionately named Willapa Willy, was found on Saturday afternoon after first being spotted swimming up the Willapa River last week.
The young whale seemed slender but OK — aside from the bizarre fact that it was swimming along a small river in Washington State.
Onlookers filming from the banks of the Willapa River
expressed disbelief; surely news of the sighting was an April Fools’ prank (it was April 1). Every so often, the whale, which appeared to be at least 30 feet long, with mottled charcoal skin, spewed out a cloud of vapor.
“Oh, that’s awesome,” one of the onlookers murmured in a video posted online.
Just three days later, the whale, which had swum 20 miles inland, was dead — the third gray whale death in the state just last week and the sixth this year, according to researchers, who are growing alarmed that the trend is part of a broader decline of the species.
Each year, from mid-February to May,
eastern North Pacific gray whales migrate northward along the West Coast, but in recent years more have been dying on the journey. Last year, 179 gray whales died during migration season, 18 of them in Washington State, said John Calambokidis, a research biologist with the Cascadia Research Collective, which had been tracking the whale. On Monday, the collective conducted a necropsy.
“This is still really early in the season,” he added. “Most of the gray whale mortality that we see occurs in April, May and June.”
Scientists don’t know exactly what is causing the spike in deaths, Mr. Calambokidis said, but they think that the deaths could be connected to the whales’ food sources in the Arctic, which have been dwindling as climate change transforms the region.
From 2019 to 2023, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration documented an “
unusual mortality event” in the population of whales that migrate along the West Coast of the United States. The agency’s
count in winter last year indicated that the population had dwindled further, to about 13,000 gray whales — the smallest population since the 1970s.
Only about 85 gray whale calves migrated past Central California on their way to feeding grounds in the Arctic in early 2025, the lowest number since record-keeping began three decades ago, according to the agency.
“When the higher mortality in 2019 began, some of us maybe viewed it as concerning but not alarming,” Mr. Calambokidis said, citing a large-scale mortality event from
1999 to 2000 that the gray whale population bounced back from. “But now that this has gone on for seven years, and we’ve seen this 50 percent decline with no sign of rebound, scientists like myself have become really alarmed.”
He and other researchers believe that the whale that died in the Willapa River — they don’t yet know its age or sex — most likely swam inland because it was searching for food or because it was ill and disoriented. The research collective was first contacted by a member of the public on Wednesday and then located the whale, Mr. Calambokidis said.
Some residents of the region surrounding the river, about 120 miles southwest of Seattle, rushed to see the oddity of an ocean beast navigating its way up the shallow waterways. They named it Willapa Willy.
“Three, two, one — blow!”
children exclaimed from the banks, counting down until the whale exhaled. In the many videos posted online, the whale moves languidly, letting out an occasional whoosh and a spurt from its blowhole before ducking back underwater.
Though it is unusual for whales to end up in rivers, Willapa Willy is hardly the first. Beluga whales have ended up in the
Seine River in France and the
Thames in England; in 2019, a young humpback washed ashore on a remote, forested island in the
Amazon River in Brazil; and in 2007, two humpbacks were stranded in the
Sacramento River in California. (That time, a team of marine rescuers played recorded humpback songs, hoping to lure the stranded mammals back to the sea.)
With Willapa Willy, Mr. Calambokidis said, it was unclear whether trying to coax the whale from the Willapa River would have helped or added to its distress. Researchers had still been trying to gather information about the whale when they learned it had died, he said. “As they get in worse and worse conditions,” he added, “they just become in a more debilitated state and may be a little out of their mind finding their way.”
By Friday, the whale had traveled so far upstream that scientists from the research collective, together with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, could no longer reach the whale by boat, Mr. Calambokidis said.
That day, two other whales were found dead about 40 miles away, he added. They were emaciated, and one had evidence of blunt force trauma to the head.
By Saturday, Willapa Willy, which had been slowly navigating its way upstream, was also dead. A member of the public reported finding the animal deceased and
half-submerged in a shallow part of the river near Raymond, Wash.
Mr. Calambokidis said that when researchers examined the whale on Monday, it seemed larger than they initially thought. It did not appear to have any major injuries, he added.
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