<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=192888919167017&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Friday, March 29, 2024
March 29, 2024

Linkedin Pinterest

Whale tracked to North America has visited before

The Columbian
Published: February 28, 2011, 12:00am

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Marine researchers say a rare whale tracked across the Pacific this year to North American waters has been there before.

Photo analysis confirmed the highly endangered western Pacific gray whale — one of only 130 remaining — was photographed in April 2008 off Vancouver Island.

U.S and Russian researchers on Oct. 4 attached a satellite tag to the then-13-year-old, male western Pacific gray whale off Sakhalin (SOCK’-a-lean) Island, Russia, as part of research into where the whales spend winters.

The whale left Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on Jan. 3 and swam half way across the Bering Sea, then south to the Gulf of Alaska and eventually to shallow coastal waters off Oregon.

Its photo was found in the catalog of Cascadia Research Collective, which tracks eastern Pacific gray whales.

Loading...