Fish & Water - Sounds Wild
Grey Whales in Sitka

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Grey whales in Sitka

On a chilly March day in 2023 a large group of whales is rolling on the surface of Sitka Sound on the outer coast of Southeast Alaska. March is too early to be seeing humpback whales here – and these aren’t humpbacks. They’re grey whales, and in recent years there’s been a big increase in gray whale activity around Sitka in the spring.

In late winter and early spring Gray whales migrate up the west coast from their calving and wintering areas in Mexico to their summer feeding areas in the Bering sea and the Arctic Ocean. It was common to see whales passing by offshore on their way north, and about a dozen would linger in in the Sitka area. But since 2019, it’s been closer to 150 grey whales - feeding, playing and showing a variety of social behavior in Sitka Sound

Grey whales feed in relatively shallow waters, dredging the silty and sandy sea bottom and straining out shrimp and other invertebrates with their baleen. But these whales are most likely eating herring and herring eggs. Pacific herring spawn in the spring in these waters and biologists monitoring spawning herring are seeing these whales in the same areas at the same time.

Biologists plan to learn more about the whales’ diet, and to create a catalog to identify the individual grey whales in Sitka Sound and document where else they go on their annual migration.