The Whale Museum

The Whale Museum The Whale Museum | San Juan Island, WA Our Museum is located in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island.
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Much of the year, the endangered Southern Resident killer whales live and forage in the waters around this island. We strive to educate people about these amazing whales, other marine creatures and the ecosystem in which they live. As people connect to the orcas, they become stewards -- making this a healthier environment for all of us to live in!

For those just tuning in, this series is being contributed by photojournalist, . Over the course of his career, Eric ha...
06/18/2026

For those just tuning in, this series is being contributed by photojournalist, .

Over the course of his career, Eric has documented wildlife, environmental change, and the relationship between people and place in some of the world’s most remote landscapes. He has worked throughout the gray whale’s migratory range, from the breeding lagoons of Baja California to feeding grounds in Alaska and the Russian Arctic.

His photography and stories have reached audiences around the world through books, exhibitions, educational programs, and publications including National Geographic, The New York Times, BBC, Hakai Magazine, and many others.

Eric has contributed to projects such as the Extreme Ice Survey and Meet the North. He has spent decades helping audiences connect with the natural world through photography, storytelling, and field-based education.

One of the reasons we are excited to share Eric’s perspective is that his work reminds us how connected our oceans truly are. The gray whales we see in the Salish Sea are part of a population that spans an entire hemisphere. Having spent years working across that range, Eric brings a perspective shaped by the broader story of these whales—and the ecosystems and cultures they connect.

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A new calf, L-130, has been spotted with L Pod! This is exciting news for the Southern Resident community and makes it e...
06/17/2026

A new calf, L-130, has been spotted with L Pod! This is exciting news for the Southern Resident community and makes it even more critical that they get the space they need this summer to hunt, forage, and play.

Soundwatch will be doing its part to educate boaters on new and existing regulations, and you can do yours by making sure to Be Whale Wise whenever you're on the water!

In 2017 I traveled to the Russian Far East on a National Geographic storytelling grant for a project called Meet The Nor...
06/17/2026

In 2017 I traveled to the Russian Far East on a National Geographic storytelling grant for a project called Meet The North. The idea was to meet locals, ask about their life, listen, then ask for a recommendation on who to talk to next. We let their recommendations lead our journey.

At least five indigenous ethnic groups live in the Chukotka region of Russia. We visited the settlement of Lorino (photo 1) where 1500 Chukchi live. Most of them supplement their diet with seal and whale meat. This is the only place in the Russian Federation where traditional whaling is an activity of special importance.

52 Gray whales are allotted, per year, for Lorino and a small group of hunters (photo 2) share that meat with their community and others. After each attempt at a whale, hunters must deliver a whaling passport to the Government of Chukotka. The report includes info. on specific catch data (including place, conditions, weight/sex of harvested animal, hunter’s comments, the presence of traumas on the whale and details of sampling if performed).

There are no large grocery stores in Lorino. No Amazon deliveries. They rely on the sea and though their relationship with gray whales differs from most, the impact of a continued unusual mortality event (post 1) will be felt in Chukotka as much as anywhere.

Recently, hunter’s reports have noted an increase in the occurrence of “stinky” whales with inedible meat. A 2025 paper linked the strong “medicinal” or “iodoformic” odor of gray whale breath to their diet of polychaete worms found in the waters of Chukotka. This is the same smell described by researchers in Washington who are gathering blow samples from local Sounders just arriving from their breeding grounds (Post 4). For them, the smell is produced by the liver when their bodies break down fat for energy instead of glucose during their months long fast. Researchers are trying to determine if climate driven shifts in the quality of prey in the Arctic (post 2) is leading to the presence of these stinky whales up north and how it could impact local communities.

Keep following to find out how the Chukchi are shifting with the times.

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06/17/2026

Southern Residents were back around Lime Kiln Point State Park yesterday, and The Whale Museum caught some great moments on the livestream of L Pod swimming through!

Wach the full highlight on YouTube: https://youtu.be/l5gLonlIUrw?si=nugg4JwQj1bvqYXE

We’ve been talking about threats to gray whales in our recent posts but the species has endured even greater population ...
06/16/2026

We’ve been talking about threats to gray whales in our recent posts but the species has endured even greater population declines than what they are experiencing today.

In the 1850s, whalers began the slaughter that brought the Eastern North Pacific (ENP) gray whale stock to the brink of extinction. Captain, Charles Scammon was the first to exploit, on a commercial scale, the fact that these animals rely on shallow, warm lagoons in Mexico and California to raise their calves. An easy target, though he coined them “Devilfish” for their understandably aggressive reaction to those whaling vessels. Up to 10,000 ENP gray whales were taken along the west coast in the 1800s. The Atlantic population was not so lucky and was hunted to extinction 200 years ago.

What’s remarkable is that, despite being hunted so heavily, ENP gray whale numbers started to rebounded once a commercial hunting ban was adopted by the League of Nations in 1930. Since then, their stock had steadily climbed to around 25,000 when, in 1994 they were delisted as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. With the population considered fully recovered at that stage, little time passed before conversations to renew whaling licenses began yet again.

Indigenous communities have been hunting whales for thousands of years. But, as of 1997, the International Whaling Commission, based on the recovered gray whale stock assessments, have officially allotted 140 gray whales to be taken, annually, for subsistence food needs.

Many have debated whether the harvesting of whales, even for subsistence reasons, should be allowed. But who is to say where the bigger impact on gray whales lies when cultural traditions and a warming climate are both a part of the equation? Keep following to get a perspective from a community living in the Arctic.

These photos were taken in the breeding lagoons of Magdalena Bay, Baja, Mexico. The same lagoons where Scammon came to hunt. Though commercial whaling is now banned, these photos of the modern day whale watching industry both contrast with, and harken back to those darker days.

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06/15/2026

Yesterday the camera at Lime Kiln Point State Park was able to capture Southern Residents passing by the area! Here are some of our favorite moments!

Catch the livestream anytime on our YouTube channel, or watch the full highlights from yesterday’s SRKW visit here: https://youtu.be/q5i-DeT22Kw?si=osPYvNAfSjsGLEGN

In April and May of this year, researchers at Seattle-based, SR3 started a pilot study to collect a suite of health metr...
06/14/2026

In April and May of this year, researchers at Seattle-based, SR3 started a pilot study to collect a suite of health metrics to assess the health of our local “Sounders” gray whales (mentioned in post 3). They collected 51 blow samples (see video) from 11 individuals to explore metabolite composition, 17 blow samples from nine of these individuals to describe respiratory microbiomes, and aerial photogrammetry images of eight of these whales to explore the relationship between physiological health and body condition (photo 2).

These non-invasive approaches, using multi-copter drones, are part of SR3’s longer-term aerial photogrammetry study on the Sounders that has monitored changes in individual body condition both seasonally and annually by making quantitative measurements of body width from aerial images. Photo 2 shows a side-by-side comparison of the same individual taken less than a month apart in 2020, soon after its arrival into Puget Sound. As you can see, by April the same individual is noticeably wider, highlighting the nutritional importance of these waters in helping gray whales build back their energy stores on their way back to the Arctic.

Then why, might you ask, would whales, like the Sounders, go all the way to the Arctic to feed if they can fatten up here? Well, not all of them do. There are around 250 individuals, known as the Pacific Coast Feeding group (PCFG), that go no further than Washington/Oregon/BC in search of food before returning to their southern breeding grounds in Mexico. For most of the ~12 Sounders that are seen annually in Puget Sound, it is just a short-term feeding stop-over, but for the PCFG whales, it is the northern most point of their migration.

Will more gray whales follow suite and shorten their migration? Time will tell but increased exposure to agricultural run-off, entanglement in fishing gear and vessel strikes in these urban areas might off-set the benefits of a shorter trip.

Images were collected under NMFS research permit # 19091.

Link to SR3 Study: https://www.sealifer3.org/impact-stories/2026-sounders-research-update
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This is post #3 in our gray whale series. If you live near Seattle you have likely heard of the Sounders. No, not the s...
06/12/2026

This is post #3 in our gray whale series.

If you live near Seattle you have likely heard of the Sounders. No, not the soccer team. The “Sounders” are a group of gray whales first documented feeding in Puget Sound in the 90’s, well east of their typical migratory route. They concentrate near Everett, WA in early spring, looking for a nutritional boost of ghost shrimp to help them on their way north. Photo 1 shows an aerial perspective of feeding pits left behind at low tide where whales plowed the muddy bottom looking for shrimp. In years following Unusual Mortality Events (mentioned in the last post), the number of gray whales seen in Puget Sound have increased.

It seems that in lean feeding years in the arctic, whales make diversions in search of food to get them through the journey - something they don’t have to do if they get enough food up north the year before. Think long roadtrip in the car, pulling off at an exit you don’t know and hoping to find a decent restaurant. In some cases the stopover is reliable enough that it’s become part of their annual migration (think Sounders). In other cases, whales known as “migration stragglers,” are doing the same, but don’t yet know where the best feeding is. Photo 2 is of a gray whale in Misty Fjords NM, in Alaska, May 2018. This is a very long, deep fjord system and a-typical of their usual feeding habitat.

In Sitka, AK, a group of ~150 gray whales have been increasingly seen in Sitka Sound around April. Researchers at have been documenting these whales lingering for a few weeks in conjunction with the annual herring spawn and seen pulling herring eggs off of kelp and actively surface feeding (photo 3)- something these bottom feeders are not well known for.

These appear to be necessary diversions that follow lean summer feeding months in the Arctic. Unfortunately, these diversions bring whales into more heavily trafficked waters where human impacts can compound their plight. Keep following to learn more about the storied history between humans and gray whales.

Text: Eric Guth. Photo 1: Hannah Clayton-https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/768e3ebaf040423eb596b21cffd10564 Photos 2-3:
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This is post #2 in a series exploring the ongoing decline of North Pacific gray whales and the Unusual Mortality Event ...
06/11/2026

This is post #2 in a series exploring the ongoing decline of North Pacific gray whales and the Unusual Mortality Event affecting their population.

What does sea ice in the Bering Sea (pictured here) and gray whale foraging success (next photo) have in common?

According to NOAA, the Bering Sea experienced record-breaking, low sea ice cover during its peak winter months in 2019, right in line with the start of the latest Unusual Mortality Event that reduced the Eastern North Pacific gray whale stock from roughly 25,000 individuals to +/-12,500 today.

Sea ice supports a rich assemblage of phytoplankton (ice algae) that melt out during the course of the spring/summer, fertilizing shallow arctic basins and feeding organisms that live in that muddy substrate. Gray whales are bottom feeding cetaceans with short, stiff baleen plates designed to exploit organisms living in shallow waters like the Bering and Chukchi Seas and, even here, in areas of the Salish Sea.

During increasingly low sea ice years, Arctic regions that lack sufficient ice cover can’t support the preferred marine invertebrates -like amphipods and tube worms- that some gray whales travel roughly 5,000 miles to access. In warm years, sea ice melts early in the spring, before there is enough light to fuel an intense phytoplankton bloom. Melting ice exposes the surface to winds that mix the water layers, disrupting the stratification that keeps nutrients and phytoplankton in the light zone. This means the bloom is less productive and happens later, when hungry zooplankton are present and consume much of the algae before it can sink and be eaten by amphipods. This means, in order to find enough of what they came to eat, gray whales have to travel further north, where enough ice was present long enough to support a phytoplankton bloom at the right time. Collectively, this means these whales struggle to put on the fat reserves they need to survive their nearly 7 month fast before returning to the Arctic the following year.

Changes in the Arctic are having a trickle down effect. How are these whales adapting? Keep following to learn more.

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Address

62 First Street N (PO Box 945)
Friday Harbor, WA
98250

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 4pm
Tuesday 10am - 4pm
Wednesday 10am - 4pm
Thursday 10am - 4pm
Friday 10am - 4pm
Saturday 10am - 4pm
Sunday 10am - 4pm

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(360) 378-4710 Ext 30

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