What On Earth25:20Face to face with the disappearing whales
Every day of summer, hundreds of tourists head to the docks in Tofino, B.C., a town perched on the western edge of Vancouver Island.
There’s so much in the area to explore — the beaches, the rainforest, the taco truck — but the grey whales are the main attraction.
“A moment that is worth more than money can buy is when one of those whales will look at you in the eye,” said Tofino mayor Dan Law. “It’s an experience everybody should have.”
But what the tourists who fill whale-watching boats may not know is that these animals are in trouble. Many are skinny; they’re starving and, in some cases, they’re dying.
“A moment that is worth more than money can buy is when one of those whales will look at you in the eye– Dan Law, Tofino mayor
Scientists say they see a potential connection to a changing climate, and want grey whales to be designated as an endangered species.
So far this calendar year, 10 grey whale carcasses have been discovered off the shores of B.C., and 30 in Washington state. Whale researchers say more whales have likely died out of sight.
How does that compare to previous years?
Looking at the whole West Coast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that, as of July 8, there had already been 145 grey whale deaths recorded in Mexico, the U.S. and Canada, compared to 179 in all of 2025, and just 61 in 2024. In 2019, as the problem was emerging, 216 grey whales washed up dead.
Whale biologist Jim Darling, who has been studying whales for more than 40 years, operates a research vessel out of Tofino.
The biggest group of grey whales left on the planet travel up to 22,000 kilometres round trip each year from their breeding grounds in the Baja region of Mexico to Alaska each year to feed, he says. That long spring migration, when so many were found dead along our shores, is a particularly vulnerable time of year for the whales.
“They haven’t eaten for some period of months … and as they’re making their way back up the coast, if something’s gonna happen, it’s gonna be March and April,” Darling told Laura Lynch of the CBC’s What on Earth. “If they run out of gas, this is pretty much when it’s going to be.”
Darling has a PhD in marine biology and is the founding director of the Canadian non-profit research and advocacy group Pacific Wildlife Foundation. He’s been sounding the alarm about Eastern North Pacific grey whales for a while now.
Last August, he and two other prominent whale biologists — one from Mexico and the other from the U.S. — wrote an open letter to call attention to the problem.
In it they wrote that “the grey whales are in precipitous decline, with significant range-wide die-offs, malnourished ‘skinny’ individuals, and reduced reproductive rates.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the U.S. estimates the population of these grey whales dropped from around 26,960 in 2016 to 12,950 in 2025.
Although a number of factors may be contributing to the die-off, scientists say it’s likely at least partly due to climate change. Melting Arctic ice and warmer waters may be reducing the number of small sea creatures the whales rely on for food, and altering the selection of what does remain.
For example, Darling recalls one time out in a research boat where his crew approached a group of whales who were eating. He says he used a net to take a sample of their meal, expecting to pull up small shrimp called mysids.
Instead he got a net full of tiny jellyfish the size of a fingernail, a kind he says is associated with warm waters and known to wreak havoc on ocean ecosystems.
They’re also just not that nutritious.
“It turns out that the calories in these jellies are much less than the calories in mysids and some of their other foods,” Darling said.
Paul Cottrell, the marine mammal co-ordinator for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, is the person in charge of the team that investigates when dead whales are found.
“I think the general hypothesis is that these animals are not getting enough food currently in their main feeding grounds, which is the Bering and Chukchi Seas.”
Success story no more
It’s not the first time the grey whale population has been in dire straits. North Atlantic grey whales were hunted to extinction in the 18th century, while the Pacific population narrowly avoided the same fate.
That recovery was lauded as a success story thanks to conservation efforts that included an international moratorium on commercial whaling.
Darling, who has been studying whales since the 1970s, says he thinks the entire population of grey whales is or may be endangered once more.
Though all grey whales make the annual migration from their breeding grounds in the Baja California region of Mexico, and the vast majority travel to Alaskan waters, there are two smaller segments that travel to and stay in different places.
One group — numbering only 200 and already considered endangered — venture near Russia’s Sakhalin Islands.
The other, which counts about 240 whales, stays in and around Vancouver Island and northern Washington state. These are the whales Darling sees often as he does his research.
“That smaller number alone meets the criteria to be called endangered,” said Darling. “If any additional problem occurs, like we have a food issue or an oil spill, anything, when you’ve got that few number of animals to start with, the outcome is not likely to be good.”
The criteria he refers to are outlined in Canada’s Species at Risk Act.
Slow process for endangered status
The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), an independent panel that advises the federal minister of environment and climate change, recommended nine years ago that this group be declared endangered. But as of yet, there’s been no decision from Ottawa.
What on Earth asked Fisheries and Oceans Canada why there’s been no answer on adding that small group of grey whales to the endangered species list, and in a written statement were told, in part, the issue “is complex and requires careful analysis and consideration.”
As for the larger group that’s been dying off so quickly, federal Minister of Fisheries Joanne Thompson made no new commitments to protect grey whales but said in a statement the situation is “deeply concerning.”
The minister said that’s why her office is working with scientists, Indigenous communities and others to better understand the problem.
Gisele Maria Martin, a guardian of the Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Parks run by the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, says she isn’t exactly floored that it’s taking so long.
“The Canadian government is very new to this place and has a lot to learn, so it doesn’t surprise me that they don’t understand the state of the whales,” she said.
“Whales have been really really important in the Tla-o-qui-aht’s economy for thousands of years,” said Martin, though that traditional source of food and trade was disrupted by colonialism, just one part of which was the commercial whaling that decimated the grey whales’ population.
“That continues today with threats to whales’ survival in general.”
She says the Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Parks, which include the deep ocean in their traditional territory, is asking all local residents, visitors and tourist operators in the area to take something called the ii-saak pledge, which includes, among other guiding principles, the promise to “protect things as they are for future generations of life.”
Tofino mayor Dan Law says he too worries that we’re not acting quickly enough to protect the grey whales.
“Whether it’s an old growth forest or whether it is grey whales or orcas or salmon, [when they] are gone, they are forgotten,” he said. “The tragedy is that the only way to stop that ultimate existential loss is to act while you still have time.
“Because when the greys are gone, and nobody is looking at them in the eye, nobody’s experiencing them puff in their face, nobody will care.”
