Walk through an inflatable Gray Whale at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History.
San Francisco, California – A gray whale that washed ashore at Lands End on June 7 is the latest in a troubling series of deaths along the Northern California coast. The male whale, found lifeless on the San Francisco shoreline, marks the 18th gray whale death in the Bay Area in 2025, according to a statement from the California Academy of Sciences released June 9. One minke whale has also died in the region this year.
Marine researchers are increasingly concerned. The deaths are part of a sharp and unexplained rise that recalls similar spikes in 2019 and 2021, when 14 and 15 gray whales died in the Bay Area, respectively. Authorities didn’t find necropsy conducted on the most recent carcass, so the cause of death remains undetermined. But experts say that at least four of this year’s fatalities are suspected to have resulted from ship strikes.
Still, that doesn’t fully explain the scale of the die-off.
Researchers have documented 33 individual gray whales inside San Francisco Bay so far in 2025—more than five times the six whales recorded in all of 2024.
This behavioral change is significant. Gray whales typically use the California coast as a migratory highway, traveling between feeding grounds in the Arctic and breeding areas in Baja California. While occasional detours into the Bay are not unprecedented, experts are struck by the scale and duration of the visits this year. One-third of the whales observed have remained in the bay for 20 days or more.
These extended stopovers could reflect environmental stressors—such as changing prey availability, warming waters, or increased human activity—but conclusive data is lacking. The whales are telling us something, we just don’t understand what it is.
For now, scientists expect the whales to remain in the Bay Area for another one to two weeks before resuming their migration northward. But with more whales entering and the death toll climbing, the broader question remains unresolved: what’s happening in the Bay, and why are these ancient navigators paying such a steep price to be here?
