Photo: Dead gray whale at Clam Gulch, on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. Photo: NOAA/May 28, 2019 A family fishing for herring north of the Clam Gulch Recreation Area on the Kenai Peninsula last Wednesday discovered a dead whale. They reported this stranding to NOAA Fisheries this past Friday with a photograph. Marine mammal […]
Marine mammal experts with NOAA Fisheries and the Alaska Marine Mammal Stranding Network are monitoring the position of a dead gray whale in Turnagain Arm near Anchorage, Alaska, hoping for an opportunity to conduct a necropsy (animal autopsy). The latest reported location of the carcass is a couple hundred yards offshore from the Placer and Twentymile rivers. At […]
Over the past five years, winter atmospheric conditions that influence the Bering Sea have been markedly different from previous years. Strong, warm winds out of the south—sometimes lasting more than 30 days—have forced sea ice northward. Water temperatures have been warmer than normal and NOAA scientists have observed some significant changes in marine species. They […]
It was a rare find: a dead sperm whale washed up on a beach in Alaska’s famed Inside Passage in Southeast Alaska. Sperm whales, which are endangered, usually hang out in deeper, offshore waters. This one—a 48-foot long male—was found beached on the east side of Lynn Canal, north of Berners Bay near Juneau. This is the first […]