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Many whales spotted as 18th comes ashore dead

Published 1:30 am Monday, May 11, 2026

By Chinook Observer

Cascadia Research Collective Researchers examine a deceased gray whale on the beach in Surfside. It was the 18th to come ashore in Washington state this spring. Some years there are none.

Cascadia Research Collective

Researchers examine a deceased gray whale on the beach in Surfside. It was the 18th to come ashore in Washington state this spring. Some years there are none.

Dead whales continue to wash up along the Washington and Oregon coastlines, including one that came ashore at Surfside on Friday, May 8.

Researchers are pointing to malnutrition due to food scarcity as the main cause of the deaths. The necropsy of the female gray whale in Surfside — the 18th known deceased whale in Washington state waters this year — determined it died from starvation and “probable trauma.”

Gray whales mostly consume amphipod crustaceans — tiny shrimp-like species they scoop up from the bottom sediment of the ocean and estuaries like Willapa Bay. The whales migrate along the Pacific Coast, with the spring migration now coming toward the end but still in progress.

An Ilwaco resident reported May 9, “Twenty years here now, I never have seen anything like this. … Whales sleeping off shore. Called logging. 30 minutes of spouting. Probably 50 incidents. No pix. Too far off shore for any [photos] of any consequence.”

On Thursday, May 7, in the late afternoon, the Pacific County 911 Communications Center (PacCom) received a report that a whale was spotted within the mouth of the Willapa River, near the Willapa Airport. The sighting was not confirmed by experts with the Cascadia Research Collective (CRC) and West Coast Marine Mammal Stranding Network.

Two days later, on Saturday, May 9, an officer with the Shoalwater Bay Police Department saw four whales off of Tokeland.

There was also another reported sighting of a whale within the Tokeland marina on Sunday, May 10. “It looked rough,” a witness said.

The May 7 sighting in the Willapa River rang alarms, coming just over a month after another whale, dubbed ‘Willapa Willy,’ swam miles up the river and died April 4 after becoming stuck on a rock-bed and tree within the river, near Hunt Clubb Road between Raymond and Menlo.

Anyone who has a confirmed sighting of a whale within the Willapa River and can snap a photo is asked to send it to the CRC at 360-791-9555.

CRC is maintaining a database of whale deaths at cascadiaresearch.org/working-list-of-gray-whale-strandings-in-2026.

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