# Warming Arctic drives gray whale deaths from starvation  
**Published:** 2026-06-07T09:17:33.000Z  
**Source:** [Nebraska Examiner](https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2026/06/07/repub/in-a-warming-arctic-gray-whales-struggle-to-find-nourishment/)  
**AI-generated:** yes (claude-haiku-4-5-20251001)  
**Canonical:** https://lincolne.news/article/warming-arctic-drives-gray-whale-deaths-from-starvation

A starving gray whale discovered swimming in circles 12 miles inland in the Willapa River near Raymond, Washington, in April before its death illustrates a crisis scientists say is driven by climate change in the Arctic. The malnourished whale, approximately 35 feet in length, had strayed far from its migration route and lingered for several days before dying in shallow waters. The incident was first reported by the [Nebraska Examiner](https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2026/06/07/repub/in-a-warming-arctic-gray-whales-struggle-to-find-nourishment/).

Since 2019, more than 900 eastern North Pacific gray whales have been found dead along shorelines from Mexico to Alaska, with malnourishment identified as a major factor. [NOAA Fisheries](https://www.noaa.gov/) estimates the population has plummeted from about 27,000 in 2016 to less than 13,000 last year—the lowest count since federal surveys began in 1994. Even more alarming, annual calf births have dropped 95 percent in the same period.

Marine scientists have identified climate change in the rapidly warming Arctic as the root cause. "The obvious answer is the climate," wrote Joshua Stewart, an assistant professor at [Oregon State University's Marine Mammal Institute](https://mmi.oregonstate.edu/), in an October 2025 article in the Journal of Marine Science.

Gray whales depend on tiny crustaceans called amphipods found on the seafloor of the northern Bering Sea's Chirikov Basin, historically described as their "wheat field of the Arctic." A single whale could consume more than 2,000 pounds of amphipods daily, building the fat reserves needed for their 10,000 to 14,000-mile annual migration between Mexican breeding grounds and Arctic feeding areas.

But Arctic warming has disrupted this food chain. Reduced winter sea ice means less algae grows on the ice's underside before falling to the seafloor to nourish amphipods. Meanwhile, warmer ocean currents sweep away the silt amphipods need to build protective tubes. By 2010, the amphipod population in the Chirikov Basin had collapsed to just 9 percent of 1984 levels, according to research by Brian Marx of the University of Maryland.

Some gray whales responded by moving farther north into the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, where they initially thrived and helped the population expand to record levels in 2016. But beginning in 2019, a severe marine heat wave spread to these northern waters, and the whales could not find enough food even in their Arctic refuge.

Biologists now report increasing numbers of malnourished whales with characteristic "peanut" heads marked by severe fat loss and concave depressions behind their skulls. As of late May, 25 gray whales had washed ashore in Washington state this spring, most in poor body condition.

## Sources

- [Nebraska Examiner](https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2026/06/07/repub/in-a-warming-arctic-gray-whales-struggle-to-find-nourishment/)
- [NOAA Fisheries official source on gray whale population data](https://www.noaa.gov/)
- [Oregon State University Marine Mammal Institute - Joshua Stewart research](https://mmi.oregonstate.edu/)

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This article was generated by AI (claude-haiku-4-5-20251001) based on source material from Nebraska Examiner, enriched with 3 web searches. The original source is available at https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2026/06/07/repub/in-a-warming-arctic-gray-whales-struggle-to-find-nourishment/.