New publication reveals gray whale habitat use patterns over three decades in the Northern California Current

By Dr. Dawn Barlow, Postdoctoral Scholar, OSU Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

The EMERALD project (Examining Marine mammal Ecology through Regional Assessment of Long-term Data) has reached a milestone with a recent publication detailing our findings on long-term gray whale distribution, abundance, and habitat use patterns (Barlow et al. 2024). The study is made possible by an incredible dataset. Every May-July since 1992, a team of observers surveyed the coastline between the Columbia River at the border between Oregon and Washington and San Francisco Bay, California for marbled murrelets, a seabird species of conservation concern. They drive a small vessel along pre-determined tracklines, and record observations of seabirds and marine mammals—not just marbled murrelets—and fortunately for us, that means there is a record of annual gray whale distribution and abundance patterns that spans over three decades.

The Crescent Coastal Research team collecting survey data. We are incredibly grateful to Craig Strong and the many folks who collected these valuable observations over the years!

We analyzed these valuable data using density surface modeling to better understand what drives gray whale distribution and abundance, what their habitat preferences are, and whether and how these occurrence patterns have changed over time. I am excited to share a few of our findings here!

Long-term, stable hotspots

The survey data revealed three main areas with consistently high gray whale density: the central Oregon Coast off Newport, Cape Blanco off Oregon’s south coast, and the mouth of the Klamath River in northern California. Despite fluctuations in how many whales were observed over the years, these areas have remained predicable hotspots for gray whales during their summer feeding season.

(A) Mean gray whale encounter rate (whales/kilometers surveyed) summarized by year, across all latitudes. (B) Mean gray whale encounter rate summarized by 1° latitude bin, across all years. White indicates times and locations with no survey effort. (C) Mean gray whale encounter rate summarized by year and 1° latitude bin. (D) Map of the study area, with region boundaries shown by the dashed lines, and major placenames denoted. Figure and caption reproduced from Barlow et al. 2024.

Key regional differences

Major features like prominent capes divide the California Current into different regions with distinct oceanographic characteristics. We found that gray whales showed different habitat preferences in the different regions. In the northern part of our study area between the Columbia River and Cape Blanco, we found that rocky bottom substrate was strongly related to areas of higher gray whale abundance, despite being far less available than soft, sandy bottom habitat. In the region between Cape Blanco and Cape Mendocino, gray whales were more abundant in areas south of prominent capes and in closer proximity to river estuaries.

Coastal upwelling and relaxation are key

Coastal upwelling—the process by which winds in the spring and summer push surface water offshore that is then replaced by cold, nutrient-rich water that is brought into the sunlight and drives an abundance of marine life—is a critically important influence in the oceanography, ecology, and biodiversity of our study region. But relaxation of those upwelling winds is also important for coastal species, as relaxation events allow the upwelled nutrients to be retained in the nearshore waters and enhance and aggregate local productivity and prey. We found that gray whale abundance was highest when there was a combination of both upwelling and relaxation events—a critical balance of “enough but not too much”—that seems to be optimal for gray whale feeding opportunities in nearshore waters.

You are what, where, and how you eat

Gray whales are incredibly flexible predators and have a wide range of prey items they are known to feed on. We found that throughout our study range, gray whales have different habitat preferences. As they spend their summers here to feed, these habitat preferences are linked to their foraging preferences. Off the central Oregon Coast, gray whales are known to feed on zooplankton that aggregate around rocky reefs and kelp forests (Hildebrand et al. 2022, 2024).

A gray whale surfaces in a patch of kelp, foraging around a rocky reef. UAS image credit: GEMM Lab.

Further south, in the region between Cape Blanco and Cape Mendocino that encompassed the long-term hotspot of gray whale sightings off the Klamath River, our models revealed different habitat preferences. In the soft-bottom habitat off the Klamath River, gray whales are known to do more benthic feeding, whereby they scoop up the seafloor and filter out the invertebrates in the sediment such as amphipods and cumaceans (Mallonée 1991, Jenkinson 2001).

A gray whale surfaces with a mouth full of muddy sediment, filtering out the invertebrate prey. UAS image credit: GEMM Lab.

These differences in regional habitat preferences and preferred prey likely relate to larger-scale phenomena as well. Indeed, when we looked at how gray whale abundance in different regions related to widespread warm or cool phases in the North Pacific Ocean, the responses differed by region. This aspect of the study indicates that what gray whales eat and where they forage influences how they respond to shifting environmental conditions and prey availability.

Conservation of an iconic nearshore predator

The unique mosaic of habitat characteristics throughout the Northern California Current summer feeding range of gray whales provides them the opportunity to gain the energetic stores they need to survive, reproduce, and migrate. Thus, the reliability of these resources has led them to return to these stable foraging hotspots year after year. Under climate change, one potential impact on upwelling systems is shifts in the intensity and location of upwelling (Bograd et al. 2023); in the Northern California Current, this could mean reduced relaxation events that we found are crucial for gray whales feeding in this habitat. Furthermore, these whales overlap with human activities such as vessel disturbance, entanglement and vessel strike risk, and ocean noise throughout the foraging season, and have to bear the consequences of these anthropogenic stressors (Sullivan & Torres 2018, Lemos et al. 2022, Pirotta et al. 2023) as they also navigate changing environmental conditions. Our study highlights the value of long-term monitoring to better understand present ecological patterns in the context of the past, which can be used to inform conservation management decisions for the future.

For more details, we invite you to read the full, open access publication here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-59552-z

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References

Barlow DR, Strong CS, Torres LG (2024) Three decades of nearshore surveys reveal long-term patterns in gray whale habitat use, distribution, and abundance in the Northern California Current. Sci Rep 14:9352.

Bograd SJ, Jacox MG, Hazen EL, Lovecchio E, Montes I, Pozo Buil M, Shannon LJ, Sydeman WJ, Rykaczewski RR (2023) Climate Change Impacts on Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems. Ann Rev Mar Sci 15:1–26.

Hildebrand L, Derville S, Hildebrand I, Torres LG (2024) Exploring indirect effects of a classic trophic cascade between urchins and kelp on zooplankton and whales. Sci Rep 14.

Hildebrand L, Sullivan FA, Orben RA, Derville S, Torres LG (2022) Trade-offs in prey quantity and quality in gray whale foraging. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 695:189–201.

Jenkinson RS (2001) Gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) prey availability and feeding ecology in Northern California, 1999-2000. Humboldt State University

Lemos L, Haxel J, Olsen A, Burnett JD, Smith A, Chandler TE, Nieukirk SL, Larson SE, Hunt KE, Torres LG (2022) Effects of vessel traffic and ocean noise on gray whale stress hormones. Sci Rep 12:1–13.

Mallonée JS (1991) Behaviour of gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) summering off the northern California coast, from Patrick’s Point to Crescent City. Can J Zool 69:681–690.

Pirotta E, Fernandez Ajó A, Bierlich KC, Bird CN, Buck CL, Haver SM, Haxel JH, Hildebrand L, Hunt KE, Lemos LS, New L, Torres LG (2023) Assessing variation in faecal glucocorticoid concentrations in gray whales exposed to anthropogenic stressors. Conserv Physiol 11:coad082.

Sullivan FA, Torres LG (2018) Assessment of vessel disturbance to gray whales to inform sustainable ecotourism. J Wildl Manage 82:896–905.

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