Rare gray whale's route surprises scientist

A western pacific gray whale busily swimming south into California waters has thrown scientists for a loop. The critically-endangered species, with only about 130 known individuals left, was thought to winter near the South China Sea. Instead, the first tagged individual took off from Russia, swam across the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska to the coast of Oregon, and began working his way south.

Dubbed "Flex," the male whale was lounging in Russia's Sea of Okhotsk near the Sakhalin Islands in October, where the whales have their summer feeding grounds. Scientists don't know where they breed but they thought they knew where they wintered.

If Flex's itinerary is any indication, they were wrong.

Flex is swimming at about four miles an hour and should cross into California this week, says Bruce Mate, director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University. His team worked with scientists from the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences to tag Flex. They update his whereabouts every Monday on their web site.

"It's a real head-scratcher," Mate said in a release. "Flex's route may or may not be typical of what western gray whales do – there could be three or four other whales from the western population making this same trip, or Flex could take an entirely different route next year."

What's most puzzling to researchers is that Flex is mirroring, at a distance, the migratory route of a separate population of whales, the eastern gray whale. Those whales migrate each year from their feeding grounds in Alaska south and breed in Mexico.

But Flex isn't traveling with the eastern grays, he's staying farther offshore, 12 to 15 miles, compared to his eastern cousins, which travel six to 10 miles offshore. Although he's caught up with the tail end of their migration he's staying away from them, says Mate.

A team of researchers, including scientists at the Russian Kronotsky State Nature Biosphere Reserve, the University of Washington, and the Sakhalin Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography, is following Flex's progress.

California groups are eagerly awaiting his arrival. "After monitoring the critically endangered western pacific gray whale population near Russia's Sakhalin Island for many years, we're thrilled to have Flex show up at our doorstep here in California," Pacific Environment director Leah Zimmerman said in a release.

UPDATE:

Scientists in Oregon say they believe the western pacific gray whale they've been tracking for 124 days has lost his tag. They posed this on their website Monday afternoon:

The last location we received from 'Flex' was off Siletz Bay last Friday (2/4/2011). While we have lost contact with Flex twice before for more than 5 days, it has always coincided with very bad weather. This time his signal loss also coincided with bad weather. With his last measured speed of 6.6 km per hour, he would arrived at the at the west end of the Santa Barbara Channel Sunday. The weather in the central California region has been very nice for the last 4 days. It is unlikely we would not have heard from 'Flex' as a result of weather or satellite passes over the region for such a long period of time, so we presume that the tag has come off and we will no longer hear from 'Flex'.